Production of monodisperse microbubbles avoiding microfluidics

Abstract

Here we report the production of monodisperse microbubbles by taking advantage of the large values of both the pressure gradients and of the local velocities existing at the leading edge of airfoils in relative motion with a liquid. It is shown here that the scaling laws for the bubbling frequencies and the bubble diameters are identical to those found in microfluidics. Therefore, the metre-sized geometry presented here is a feasible candidate to circumvent the inherent problems of using micron-sized geometries in real applications – namely, wettability, the low productivity and the clogging of the microchannels by particles or other impurities. © Cambridge University Press 2018