Son et bulles

Muthupandian Ashokkumar est professeur à l'école de chimie de l'université de Melbourne.

Résumé du séminaire : Acoustic cavitation in liquids generates extreme conditions that have been utilised for a variety of applications in chemistry, physics, food processing, medicine, etc. Whilst numerous studies have been carried out using lab-scale ultrasonic reactors, the development of large-scale applications still remains a challenge. One of the major issues faced by sonochemists is the optimization of experimental parameters that could be applied to any sonochemical reaction in general under various experimental conditions. This is due to the inter-dependent experimental variables. For the past 15 years or so, our group has been exploring how acoustic cavitation is affected by various experimental parameters. The talk will aim to highlight some fundamental aspects of acoustic cavitation. Specifically, the following aspects will be discussed :

• How surfactants influence growth of cavitation bubbles by rectified diffusion.
• How multibubble sonoluminescence can be used to understand the properties of cavitation bubbles.
• How sonochemically active and sonoluminescing cavitation bubbles are influenced by certain experimental parameters.
• How the properties of sonochemically synthesised materials can be controlled by manipulating the active cavitation zone.
• Some recent applications of acoustic cavitation in food processing, microsphere synthesis and sonocrystallisation.