Nucleation and Growth of Bubble With the Effects of Solute Gas

Bubble nucleation and growth of formed nuclei are investigated by molecular dynamics simulation in Lennard-Jones liquid with gas impurities. For the onset of nucleation from bulk, it has been found that a dissolved gas whose interaction is very weak and whose diameter is larger than that of solvent molecules makes the action to cause composition fluctuation or local phase separation so strong that the nucleation probability predicted from pressure change becomes qualitatively wrong. It has been confirmed that this wrong prediction is generally explained by introducing the superheat ratio nondimensionalized by saturation pressure and spinodal pressure. For the growth stage of formed bubble nuclei, it is observed that the coalescence of nuclei occurs when a weak-interaction gas is dissolved at a high concentration while the competition between neighbor nuclei is dominant in the case of pure liquid.