Binary Nucleation of Deuterium Oxide with n-Butanol

Kelley Mullick (1), Barbara Wyslouzil (2)

(1) Ohio State University, Columbus

     Abstract Number: 648
     Last modified: May 14, 2010

Abstract
Binary nucleation of water and n-alcohols is a challenging topic of research because these mixtures do not form ideal liquid solutions. In fact only methanol, ethanol and propanol are fully miscible with water. In this study, we focused on n-butanol, the first n-alcohol that exhibits a miscibility gap with water. In this system surface enrichment should be important driven both by the difference in surface tension as well as by the lack of miscibility. We conducted pressure trace measurements (PTM) for a series of mixtures in two supersonic nozzles for experiments with a stagnation pressure and temperature of 60.1 kPa and 308 K respectively. Temperature, pressure, mass fraction of the condensate, gas velocity, and the nucleation time scale were determined by PTM. Small Angle X-ray Scattering (SAXS) measurements were used to determine the aerosol number densities. The combination of these two experiments allows the binary nucleation rate to be directly measured in the nozzle.