“Nanobubbles are the tiniest bubbles you’ve never seen,” says Niall English, a chemical engineering researcher at Univ. College Dublin. With diameters from 50 to 100 nm — less than the wavelength of visible light — nanobubbles are too small to be seen with the naked eye. Yet despite their invisibility, these bubbles have the potential to revolutionize a variety of environmental and industrial processes, including agriculture, wastewater treatment, and ecosystem management.
One of the key properties of nanobubbles is their extremely high surface-area-to-volume ratio. This makes them less subject to the phenomena of buoyancy, meaning they can stay suspended in liquids for long periods of time. While larger bubbles rise to the atmosphere very quickly, nanobubbles have a lifetime of hours or even days.
Up until now, these curious bubbles have typically been generated using a method called cavitation, where gas is forced through a membrane at high pressure. But this process has proved both energy expensive and error-prone, whereby the membrane gets fouled and breaks down.
To address these issues, English and his colleagues invented a novel method to generate nanobubbles using...
Would you like to access the complete CEP News Update?
No problem. You just have to complete the following steps.
You have completed 0 of 2 steps.
-
Log in
You must be logged in to view this content. Log in now.
-
AIChE Membership
You must be an AIChE member to view this article. Join now.
Copyright Permissions
Would you like to reuse content from CEP Magazine? It’s easy to request permission to reuse content. Simply click here to connect instantly to licensing services, where you can choose from a list of options regarding how you would like to reuse the desired content and complete the transaction.