Investigation on Characteristics of Bubble Nucleation, Growth and Detachment During Photochemical Catalysis

Bubble dynamics in photochemical catalysis process is an important parameter to study gas-liquid two phase flow behavior, which has a significant effect on the efficiency of water splitting and the heat and mass transfer during the reaction process. In this paper, an experimental system to investigate the dynamic characteristics of O₂ bubbles envolved from the TiO₂ photoelectrode surface is designed. The law of O₂ bubble evolution followed d ∝ t^x, which x equaled to 0.5~0.85 within bubble formation 10 ms, and x ≈ 0.33 after 10 ms. The images of bubble nucleation initial stage were captured. The bubble nucleation spatiotemporal scale was obtained by optical method. Finally, the influence of laser power and constant bias on bubble detachment diameter was also presented.