New Insights into Nucleation

Natural gas currently supplies ~23% of world energy needs. In addition to methan, raw natural gas contains water, higher hydrocarbons, and impurities that must be removed before the gas is transported and used. Supersonic nozzle separators for natural gas are currently being developed to remove impurities and the first step is to cool the gas to induce droplet formation and growth. Thus, understanding particle formation of the n-alkanes and n-alcohols in supersonic flows has important technological applications in the petrochemical industry and provides a way to replace chemical separation processes with one that is more environmentally benign. In this work, the homogeneous nucleation rates of the n alkanes and n-alcohols have been determined by combining information from two sets of supersonic Laval nozzle expansion experiments under almost identical conditions. In the first experiments static pressure measurements were conducted to determine the thermodynamical properties related to the nucleation event. In the second set of experiments Small Angle X ray Scattering is applied to investigate the geometric properties of the aerosol particles.