Chinese Journal of Chemical Engineering, 16(4) 547551 (2008)

The Collapse Intensity of Cavities and the Concentration of Free

Hydroxyl Radical Released in Cavitation Flow
*
ZHANG Xiaodong ()
**
, FU Yong (), LI Zhiyi () and ZHAO Zongchang()
R&D Institute of Fluid and Powder Engineering, Dalian University of Technology, Dalian 116012, China
Abstract Enhancing the chemical reaction processes by means of the energy released in the collapse of micro
bubbles or cavities in the cavitation flow is a new research area. In the previous work, a new approach of measuring
concentration of free hydroxyl radicals induced in cavitation flow by using methylene blue as the indicator was de-
veloped and used to study concentration of free radical induced in Venturi cavitation flow under various experi-
mental conditions. In the present research, the radial evolution of a cavity bubble and the corresponding collapse
pressure in sonic cavitation field are obtained by solving three different bubble dynamics equations: Rayleigh equa-
tion, Rayleigh-Plesset equation and Gilmore equation. By comparing with the experimental data on the radial evo-
lution of a cavity bubble in the literature, it is found that the predicted results by the Gilmore equation, which takes
account of the compressibility of fluid in addition to the viscosity and interfacial tension, agree with the experimen-
tal ones better than those by other two equations. Moreover, the theoretically predicted collapse pressures are con-
sistent with the concentration of the free hydroxyl radical induced in the experimental venture. Thus, the concentra-
tion of the liberated free hydroxyl radical not only influences the reaction rate but also is used as an available pa-
rameter for measuring collapse intensity of cavities.
Keywords hydrodynamic cavitation, collapse pressure, numerical simulation, free hydroxyl radical
1 INTRODUCTION
Cavitation flow can cause vibration, noise and
erosion in many hydraulic structures or machineries
and results in severe damage of these installations.
These harmful effects of cavitation flow have been
intensively researched in the past decades [14].
However, the local high temperature and high pressure
due to the collapse of cavitation bubbles can induce
the cleavage of water molecules and yield free hy-
droxyl radicals, OH, which is an oxidizing agent in
many chemical reactions, so hydrodynamic cavitation
can be used for enhancing many industrial processes
such as chemical reactions, sterilization, treatment of
organic waste water and so on. These useful phenom-
ena of cavitation flow have attracted great interest and
been studied by some researchers in recent years [57].
As the concentration of OH induced by the col-
lapse of cavitation bubbles depends on energy re-
leased or collapse intensity of cavitation bubbles, the
concentration of OH induced not only influences the
chemical reaction rate but also can be used for meas-
uring collapse intensity of cavitation bubbles which
can not be measured directly by now.
Kumar et al. [8], Gogate et al. [9] and Zhang et al.
[10] researched the effects of cavitation flow on the
chemical reaction by use of iodine as the indicator for
free radicals induced in the cavitation flow, the iodine
coming from aqueous solution of KI is deoxidized
by OH. The aqueous solution of KI is sensible to the
light and easily to decompose, so it causes the uncer-
tainty in measurement, moreover, the high price also
limits its large scale use.
In our previous work, a new approach for meas-
uring the concentration of OH in cavitation flow was
proposed [11]. Authors adopted methylene blue as an
indicating agents for free radicals and used the UV-Vis
spectrophotometry to measure the change in concen-
tration of methylene blue in the reaction with OH, so
the amount of OH consumed, namely the concentra-
tion of OH induced in cavitation flow can be known.
The detailed description about this approach can be
found in Ref. [11].
The collapse pressure of a cavitation bubble can
be obtained by solving the bubble dynamic equations.
There are three different bubble dynamic equations:
Rayleigh equation, Rayleigh-Plesset equation and
Gilmore equation. Most researches adopted
Rayleigh-Plesset equation, which is suitable for in-
compressible liquid, to simulate the bubble dynamics
in cavitation flow. Moholkar and Pandit [12] numeri-
cally investigated the nonlinear dynamics of the bub-
bles in cavitation flow through a Venturi and an orifice
plate based on Rayleigh-Plesset equation. Gogate and
Pandit [13] simulated the bubble dynamics in an ori-
fice plate cavitation reactor by adopting two different
bubble dynamic equations for two different stages
respectively, the Rayleigh-Plesset equation was used
for one stage when bubble wall velocities was less
than 1500 ms
1
, the equation given by Tomita and
Shima [14] was used for another stage when bubble
velocity exceeded 1500 ms
1
.
Up to now, Gilomre equation which takes ac-
count of the fluid compressibility in addition to vis-
cosity and interfacial tension of fluid has not been
found to be adopted for simulating the cavitation flow
in Venturi or in orifice plate.
In this article, three bubble dynamic equations
are adopted to simulate the radial evolution of a cavity
bubble in acoustic cavitation field under the same
conditions as given in Ref. [15]. Compared with ex-
perimental data in the literature, Gilomre equation is
finally adopted to calculate collapse pressure of the
Received 2007-06-27, accepted 2007-12-28.
* Supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (10472024).
** To whom correspondence should be addressed. E-mail: zhangxd56@163.com
Chin. J. Chem. Eng., Vol. 16, No. 4, August 2008 548
cavity bubble in Venturi cavitation flow under the
varying pressure field. The predicted collapse pres-
sures are compared with the measured concentrations
of free radical under different conditions in order to
reveal the relationship between them.
2 MATHEMATICAL MODEL
2.1 Governing equations
Rayleigh [16] firstly established the bubble dy-
namics equation for a bubble with radius R as follows:
2 R
3
2
p p
RR R

+ =

(1)
in which liquid viscosity and liquid compressibility
was neglected. Here is the liquid density, p

is the
liquid pressure in the infinite domain far from the
bubble, and p
R
is fluid pressure which acts on the out-
side surface of the bubble, which follows from the
balance of the forces acting on the bubble:
R i
2
p p
R
o
= (2a)
Having considered the surface tension and liquid
viscosity, the Rayleigh-Plesset equation of bubble dy-
namics was established by Plesset in the following
forms [17]:
R i
2
4
R
p p
R R
o
=

(2b)
2
i
3 1 2 4
2
RR R p p R
R R
o

(
+ =
(


(3)
where p
i
is the pressure inside the bubble. When p
i
and
p

are known, these equations can be solved to get R (t).

In order to take account of the liquid compressi-
bility, the Kirwood-Bethe approximation was intro-
duced, which considers the transmission velocity of
pressure pulses equals to the liquid velocity plus the
sound velocity. So the Gilmore equations of bubble
dynamics turn into the following form [18]:
R
2
1
2
R
1
2
R
3 d
1 1 1 1
2 3 d
d
1
1
n
p n
p
n
n
R R R R R H
RR R H
c c c c c t
c p B p
H
n p B
p B
c c
p B

| | | | | | | |
+ = + +
| | | |
\ . \ . \ . \ .

(
+ | |
(
= =
|
(
+
\ .

+ | |
=
|
+
\ .
)


(4)
where c is the sound velocity in liquid, H is the en-
thalpy difference between pressure p
R
and p

under
isentropic conditions, c

is the sound velocity in un-

disrupted liquid. B and n are liquid constants, B
310
8
Pa, n7 [19]. Eq. (2b) remains valid in this case.
2.2 Numerical method and initial conditions
The bubble dynamic equations are second-order
nonlinear differential equations, which are difficult to
find the analytic solution. So the fourth-order
Runge-Kutta is adopted for solving Eqs. (1), (3) or (4)
and the time step t is taken as 0.1s in the present
work.
The initial conditions of Eqs. (1), (3) or (4) are
RR
0
and dR/dt0 at t0.
A schematic diagram of the Venturi used in pre-
sent research is shown in Fig. 1. In order to solve Eqs.
(1), (3) or (4) and get the bubble growth, collapse
process and collapse pressure of a bubble, the inner
pressure in a bubble, p
i
,and the far field pressure, p

,
should be identified. The inner pressure, p
i
, equals the
saturated vapor pressure at the operation temperature,
which is 2340 Pa (20C) in the present study. The far
field pressure, p

, is taken as the fluid pressure on the

cross section having the same horizontal position with
the bubble, so it is a function of time and location of
the bubble. Based on the assumption that the pressure
drop in the expansion section of Venturi is linear, we
can obtain p

when p
0
and p
2
are known,
( )
0 2 0
( ) x t
p p p p
L

= + (5)
where x(t) is the axial position of the bubble center
from the Venturi throat.
Figure 1 Schematic diagram of Venturi
The collapse pressure P
c
is defined as fluid pres-
sure acting on a bubble at the instant of the bubble
collapse. In this study, the collapse of a bubble is as-
sumed to be completed when its radius reaches 0.1
times of the initial radius [13]. So it can be obtained
from Eq. (2b) in the following form:
0
c i
0.1
2
4
R R
R
P p
R R
o

=
| |
=
|
\ .

(6)
The other parameters are as follows: inlet pres-
sure, p
1
0.20.8 MPa, outlet pressure, p
2
0.1 MPa,
initial bubble radius, R
0
10200 m, the ratio of
throat diameter to pipe diameter, d
0
/d
1
0.120.3, the
expansion angle, 516, the length of expansion
section, L0.080.2 m. The other constants are
0.0727 Nm
1
, 1.00510
3
Pas, 998 kgm
3
,
d
1
d
2
0.025 m.
3 RESULTS AND DISCUSSION
3.1 Comparison between different models
As hydrodynamic cavity bubbles move fast
together with the turbulent bulk liquid when passing
through a Venturi or an orifice plate, it takes a bubble
about tens to hundreds microseconds from its expansion
Chin. J. Chem. Eng., Vol. 16, No. 4, August 2008 549
to collapse, so it is difficult to measure the variation of
a cavity bubble radius with time in hydrodynamic
cavitation flow. However, its available in acoustic
cavitation fields, because the cavity bubbles move
within a very small space. Three different bubble dy-
namic equations mentioned above are used to simulate
the radial evolution of a cavity bubble in sonic cavita-
tion fields with time under the same conditions as in
Ref. [15], namely the far field pressure is
( )
o a
sin 2 p p p ft

= t (7)
were p
o
0.101325 MPa is the atmospheric pressure,
p
a
0.129 MPa is the amplitude of driving sonic
pressure, f25 kHz is its frequency. The initial radius
of a cavity bubble is taken as R
0
6.18 m. The far
field pressure given by Eq. (7) is plotted in Fig. 2(a).
(a) Variation of far field pressure with time
(b) Predicted and experimental radial variations of a bubble
Figure 2 Comparison of the experimental results from Ref.
[15] with the theoretical ones for the bubble evolution
experiment;

Rayleigh;

R-P; Gilmore
The present prediction and experimental data [15]
on radial variation of a bubble subjected to far field
pressure as shown in Fig. 2 (a) with time are shown in
Fig. 2 (b). The theoretically predicted collapse pres-
sures are shown in Table 1.
As shown in Fig. 2 (a), the liquid pressure of far
field is the sine function of time. During first quarter
of the time period, namely 10 s, the pressure of the
far field begin to decrease and leads to the bubble ex-
pansion and radial outward motion of surrounding
liquid. After that, the pressure of the far field turns to
increase, the bubble expansion will be resisted. Be-
cause of moving inertia the bubble will continue ex-
pansion until its surface velocity ( ) R t

which is the
slope of tangential line of the evolvement curve R(t) is
zero, at this moment the bubble reaches its maximum
size and the expansion will stop. The bubble expan-
sion takes about 18 s, after this moment the bubble
undergoes the rapid compress and collapse due to the
increase of the pressure of the far field. As the third
term on the right hand side of Eq. (2b) gets very large
at the moment of bubble collapse, the collapse pres-
sure will become very large.
It should be noticed that the predicted results by
Gilomre equation agree well with experimental ones.
Although Rayleigh-Plesset equation could also give
better results compared with experimental ones, but
the corresponding collapse pressures shown in Table 1
appear quite large differences, the collapse pressures
predicted by Rayleigh equation and Rayleigh-Plesset
are much lager than that by Gilmore equation. From
Eq. (2) the collapse pressure depends on the bubble
wall velocity at the instant of collapse, which equals
to the slop of the radial evolution curve of a cavity
bubble at the instance of collapse.
As shown in Fig. 2, the predicted curves by
Rayleigh equation and Rayleigh-Plesset equation get
steeper than that by Gilmore equation at the end of
collapse. This is why the predicted collapsed pressures
by Rayleigh equation and Rayleigh-Plesset equation
are higher than that by Gilmore equation.
The Gilmore equation is finally adopted to calculate
the collapse pressure in Venturi in the present research.
Table 1 Predicted collapse pressure
Governing equation Collapse pressure P
c
/MPa
Rayleigh 1353
R-P 1051
Gilmore 160
3.2 Bubble dynamic behavior and the concentra-
tion of OH induced
The effects of geometric and operation parame-
ters on the collapse pressure are numerically studied
based on the Gilmore equation. The concentrations
of OH induced in cavitation flow under the corre-
sponding geometric and operation parameters are also
measured by the same approach and experimental ap-
paratus as in our previous paper [11].
3.2.1 Effect of initial bubble radius (R
0
)
The effects of initial bubble radius on the growth,
collapse processes and corresponding collapse pres-
sure of the cavity bubble are shown in Figs. 3 and 4
under the conditions of p
1
0.6 MPa, d
0
0.004 m,
d
1
0.025 m, L0.15 m, p
2
0.1 MPa.
Figure 3 Variation of a bubble radius with time for dif-
ferent initial bubble radius
Chin. J. Chem. Eng., Vol. 16, No. 4, August 2008 550
Figure 4 Effect of initial bubble radius on the collapse
pressure
From these figures, it can be seen that the col-
lapse pressure decreases with the increase of initial
radius. The smaller initial radius is, the higher bubble
surface velocity at the instant of bubble collapse will
be, which results in the increase of collapse pressure.
3.2.2 Effect of inlet pressure (p
1
):
The effects of inlet pressure on the collapse
pressure and concentration of free radical are shown in
Fig. 5 under the conditions of p
2
0.1 MPa, R
0
60
m, d
0
0.004 m, L0.15 m, d
1
d
2
0.025 m. It
can be seen that the collapse pressure increases with
inlet pressure at first, and then decreases with it when
the inlet pressure reaches 0.5 MPa. The phenomena
can be explained as follows: when the inlet pressure is
lower than 0.5 MPa, the throat pressure will decrease
with the increase of inlet pressure and results in the
increase of pressure gradient at expansion section of
the Venturi and the increase of collapse pressure.
However, when the inlet pressure exceeds 0.5 MPa,
the throat pressure will increase with the increase of
inlet pressure and this gives opposite results [11]. As
shown in Fig. 5, the variation of concentration of free
radical induced with the inlet pressure is consistent
with that of the collapse pressure. And this indicates
that there is a definite relations between them by
which the intensity of bubble collapse can be ex-
pressed by the concentration of free radical OH.
Figure 5 Effects of inlet pressure on the collapse pressure
and concentration of OH induced
c
OH
; collapse pressure
3.2.3 Effect of the throat diameter (d
0
)
The effects of the throat diameter of the Venturi,
d
0
, on the collapse pressure and the concentration of
free radical induced, are studied by changing the
throat diameter and keeping other parameters constant:
R
0
60 m, p
1
0.6 MPa, p
2
0.1 MPa, L0.15 m,
d
1
d
2
25 mm. The variations of collapse pressure
and the concentration of free radical with d
0
are plot-
ted in Fig. 6.
Figure 6 Effects of d
0
on the collapse pressure and con-
centration of OH induced
c
OH
; collapse pressure
As shown in Fig. 6 the collapse pressure de-
creases with the increase of d
0
. Because of increase of
d
0
, the throat pressure will increases, which results in
the decrease of pressure gradient at the expanding sec-
tion of the Venturi and the decrease of the collapse
pressure. It is also seen that the variation of concentra-
tion of free radical induced is consistent with that of
the collapse pressure.
3.2.4 Effect of the expansion angle
The effects of the expansion angle () on the col-
lapse pressure and concentration of free radical in-
duced are studied by changing expending angle and
keeping other parameters constant: p
1
0.6 MPa, p
2

0.1 MPa, R
0
60 m, d
0
0.004 m, d
1
d
2
25 mm.
The results of simulation are shown in Fig. 7. It can be
seen that with the increase of the collapse pressure
increase. This effect can be attributed to the increase
in pressure gradient at the expanding section for a
fixed pressure difference between the throat and outlet
of Venturi. It is also seen that the variation of concen-
tration of free radical induced is consistent with that of
the collapse pressure.
Figure 7 Effects of the expansion angle on the collapse
pressure and concentration of OH induced
c
OH
; collapse pressure
3.2.5 Correlation of the collapse pressure with OH
induced
Based on the collapse pressures predicted theo-
retically and the concentration of OH measured ex-
perimentally under the conditions mentioned above,
Chin. J. Chem. Eng., Vol. 16, No. 4, August 2008 551
the scatter plot of lnP
c
versus lnc
OH
and correspond-
ing fitting line are shown in Fig. 8.
Figure 8 The correlation between the collapse pressure
and the concentration of OH induced
The linear correlation from data fitting is
c OH
ln 0.3829ln 4.9631 P c

= + (8a)
So the collapse pressure is the exponential function of
the concentration of OH in the range of the present
study:
0.3829
c OH
143.04 P c

= (MPa) (8b)
where c is in unit of molL
1
. Based on the regres-
sion analysis, factor F of fitting correlation (8a) is F
31.40, while F
0.01
(1,16) is 8.53 [20], where signifi-
cance level o is take as 0.01 and the number of sample
data is N18. Because of FF
0.01
(1,16), the correla-
tion Eq. (8a) is significant and valid over the range of
parameters considered. The concentration of induced
OH not only influences the chemical rate but also can
be used as an available parameter for measuring col-
lapse intensity of cavity bubbles.
4 CONCLUSIONS
The Gilmore equation is more suitable to simu-
late the bubble behaviors in cavitation flow and give
more reasonable collapse pressure, so the compressi-
bility of fluid has more important influence on the
collapse pressure than that of the viscosity and inter-
facial tension.
The variation of collapse pressure predicted
theoretically is in good consistency with that of the
concentration of free hydroxyl radical obtained ex-
perimentally, and the collapse pressure is an exponen-
tial function of the concentration of OH in the range
of present study.
Collapse pressure depends upon the operation
and geometric parameters, it decreases with the in-
crease of initial cavity bubble radius, and the throat
diameter, it also increases with the increase of expan-
sion angle. Moreover, collapse pressure will increase
with the increase of inlet pressure at first and then de-
crease after reaching a maximum.
NOMENCLATURE
B liquid constant, Pa
c velocity of sound in the liquid, ms
1
c
OH
concentration of free hydroxyl radical, omlL
1
c

velocity of sound in undisrupted liquid, ms

1
d
0
throat diameter of the Venturi, m
d
1
inlet diameter of the pipe, m
d
2
outlet diameter of the pipe, m
H enthalpy difference at pressure p
R
and p

, kJkg
1
L length of expansion section, m
n liquid constant
P
c
collapse pressure, MPa
p
i
pressure inside the bubble, MPa
p
R
liquid pressure on the outside surface of the bubble, MPa
p

pressure far from the bubble, MPa

p
1
inlet pressure, MPa
p
2
outlet pressure, MPa
R

first order derivative of R(t), ms

1
R

second order derivative of R(t), ms

2
R(t) bubble radius at time t, m
R
0
initial radius of the bubble, m
expansion angle, ()
viscosity of liquid, Pas
o surface tension of liquid, Nm
1
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