Oil-contaminated Surface Cleaning using Oxygen and Nitrogen Nanobubbles

Abstract

Surface cleaning is extremely important topic in various industrial and laboratorial applications. Cleaning agents should fulfil numerous requirements, including effectiveness, leaving minimal amount of residue as well as being able to clean different surfaces and contaminants. In this work, the nanobubble dispersions were tested for cleaning of two different contaminants: vegetable oil and UV color protective oil. Both contaminants were applied onto glass slides and stainless steel plates. Nanobubble dispersions were generated in distilled water. Outflow from nanobubble generator was set tangentially to the contaminated surface during nanobubble generation. The effectiveness of cleaning was assessed visually and by contact angle analysis. Results have shown that the effectiveness of cleaning is higher for oxygen nanodispersion compared to nitrogen nanodispersion. However this process requires further fine-tuning to increase its effectiveness.