Characterization of the performance of an injector for the controlled generation of microbubbles

Abstract

We perform a characterization of a recently reported microbubble injector in conditions relevant to microgravity. Injection of bubbles is based on the generation of a slug flow in a capillary T-junction, whose operation is robust to changes in the gravity level. We address questions regarding the performance under different working regimes. In particular, we focus on the regimes found within a large range of gas and liquid injection flow rates. The injection performance is characterized by measuring bubble generation frequency. We propose curves obtained empirically for the behavior of generation frequency and crossover between regimes.