Homogeneous bubble nucleation in binary systems of liquid solvent and dissolved gas.

A formulation of the classical nucleation theory (CNT) is developed for bubble nucleation in a binary system composed of a liquid solvent and a dissolved gas. The theoretical predictions are compared to the experimental nucleation data of four binary mixtures, i.e. diethylether – nitrogen, propane – carbon dioxide, isobutane – carbon dioxide, and R22 (chlorodifluoromethane) – carbon dioxide. The presented CNT formulation is found to improve the precision of the simpler theoretical method of Ward et al. [J. Basic Eng. 92 (10), 71–80, 1970] based on the weak-solution approximation. By analyzing the available experimental nucleation data, an inconsistency in the data reported by Mori et al. [Int. J. Heat Mass Transfer, 19 (10), 1153–1159, 1976] for propane – carbon dioxide and R22 – carbon dioxide is identified. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]