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Published on: December 25, 2015
Gas-resolved energy partitioning in a high-frequency sonoreactor: decoupling cavitation-driven reactivity from
Oualid Hamdaoui1, Abdulmajeed Baker1, Lahssen El Blidi1
1Chemical Engineering Department, College of Engineering, King Saud University, 12372 Riyadh, Saudi Arabia.
None:
A gas-resolved energetic and mechanistic framework was developed to determine how acoustic power dissipated in a high-frequency sonoreactor is partitioned between cavitation-dependent and non-cavitational contributions, and how this partitioning governs sonochemical reactivity. The approach combines calorimetry with a ΔP-based energetic analysis, using boiled, cooled without headspace, and subsequently vacuum-treated ultrapure water as a cavitation-suppressed reference, together with multimodal cavitation assessment by KI dosimetry, KI-ammonium heptamolybdate (AHM) dosimetry, Fricke dosimetry, H2O2 dosimetry, 4-nitrophenol (4-NP) dosimetry, sonochemiluminescence, and Sunset Yellow FCF (SSY) degradation under unsparged water and water nominally conditioned with Ar, He, CO2, O2, and air at 60 and 100 W. Calorimetry showed that a substantial fraction of the total power dissipated in the liquid persisted in the vacuum-treated gas-depleted reference, demonstrating the presence of a dominant non-cavitational baseline, while the gas-dependent excess defined an apparent cavitation contribution. In contrast to the relatively moderate gas effect observed calorimetrically, the chemical and optical probes revealed strong gas-specific pathway selectivity. KI and KI-AHM highlighted interfacial and peroxide-assisted oxidation, Fricke and H2O2 emphasized bulk oxidizing capacity, 4-NP identified argon as the most effective condition for direct aromatic hydroxylation, and SSY degradation showed that oxygen and argon gave the highest overall oxidative performance. This work introduces an integrated strategy that resolves not only how much power is dissipated in the liquid, but also how dissolved gas composition governs the chemical destiny of that power.
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