The role of salts in acoustic cavitation and the use of inorganic complexes as cavitation probes

Abstract

Inorganic complexes have been employed as cavitation probes to ascertain invaluable quantitative information pertaining to bubble collapse temperatures and pressures, and provide qualitative insight into other fundamental aspects of cavitation. In addition to serving as cavitation probes, simple salts exert a marked influence on critical facets of acoustic cavitation ranging from nucleation, to inter-bubble interactions and the bubble size distribution. Multi-bubble sonoluminescence intensities can be elevated by almost an order of magnitude at high electrolyte concentration and the coalescence behaviour exhibited between bubbles scales with the 'salting-out' effect of a range of solutes, adding an interesting insight in the context of ion-specific electrolyte coalescence inhibition. This chapter provides a review of the literature available in these areas. © 2011 Springer Science+Business Media B.V.