C (Jan 2023)

Physical Processes Occurring in Dispersed Media with Carbon Nanomaterials under the Influence of Ultrasonification

  • Svetlana Obukhova,
  • Evgenii Korolev

DOI
https://doi.org/10.3390/c9010018
Journal volume & issue
Vol. 9, no. 1
p. 18

Abstract

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The up-to-date carbon nanoparticle application in materials science and composites is mostly represented by controlling of different methods of structure formation including incorporation of nanomaterials or nano-modifiers. The efficiency of such methods depends on disagglomeration and the distribution degree of the carbon nanoparticle within a dispersion medium, which are critical parameters to produce a composite with improved performance. At the same time, common approaches such as a surface activation or using surfactants do not guarantee a homogeneous dispersion of carbon nanoparticles. This research reports on a theoretical analysis of physical processes which take place during the ultrasonic treatment which is a widely used method for dispersion of nanomaterials. The experimental data demonstrate an efficiency of the proposed method and prove the theoretical assumptions. The theoretical analysis performed in this study can be applied to implement and scale-up the process using sonicators. It was established that ultrasonic treatment has a more intensive effect in an organic hydrocarbon medium. So, in industrial oil, the heating rate from ultrasonification is 20 °C/min, in residual selective purification extract, it is 33 °C/min. For aqueous systems, the heating rate from ultrasonification is significantly lower and amounts to 2 °C /min for suspensions with Sulfanol and 11 °C/min for suspensions with ViscoCrete 2100. It was established that in the studied dispersed systems (aqueous solutions with surfactants and organic medium), there is no directly proportional dependence of the amount of heating of suspensions on the duration of ultrasound dispersion (USD), which is caused by ultrasonic dispersion not under adiabatic conditions, as well as the dependence of absorption coefficient of ultrasonic energy for dispersed systems on parameters of system structure.

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