A theoretical model for ice primary nucleation induced by acoustic cavitation

Abstract

The modelling and simulation of ice nucleation triggered by acoustic cavitation was addressed in this study. The objective was to evaluate the number of nuclei generated by a single gas bubble and afterwards by a multi-bubble system as function of the acoustic pressure (ultrasound wave amplitude) and supercooling level (liquid temperature). According to our calculations, the nucleation could be initiated with moderated acoustic pressure amplitude (around one bar) even at low supercooling levels (around few degrees). These results may provide a sound basis for the control of ice crystal size and morphology which is a key issue in industrial freezing and freeze-drying processes.

Impact of vacuum-induced surface freezing on inter- and intra-vial heterogeneity

“…Recently, various methods (alternative to the shelf-ramped freezing) have been proposed to make this process less unpredictable [3][4][5][6][7][8][9][10][11][12][13][14]. Among these include the following: electrofreezing [4], ultrasound [5][6][7][8], depressurization method [9] and ice fog technique [10][11]. All these methods were found to give a dramatic reduction in cycle duration and improve the homogeneity of the batch as a whole, thus ensuring similar product characteristics in all the vials of the batch.…”

An improvement in the immersion freezing process for frozen dough via ultrasound irradiation

“…There are three kinds of mechanism of ultrasound induces primary nucleation (Saclier et al, 2010;Kiani et al, 2011). Firstly, the high pressures occurring during the vigorous collapse of transient ultrasonic cavitation bubbles results in high degrees of supercooling.…”

“…During the phase transition stage, the ultrasonic cavitation bubble provided a favorable condition for the occurrence of heterogeneous primary nucleation of ice, and shock waves and micro-jets promoted secondary nucleation by breaking up the pre-existing dendritic ice crystals into tiny nuclei (Chow et al, 2003(Chow et al, , 2004(Chow et al, , 2005Delgado et al, 2009;Delgado and Sun, 2011;Inada et al, 2001;Kiani et al, 2011Kiani et al, , 2012Petzold and Aguilera, 2009;Saclier et al, 2010;Zhang et al, 2001Zhang et al, , 2003Zheng and Sun, 2006). In Fig.…”

“…Utilization of power ultrasound in food processing, preservation and extraction is a green novel technology (Chemat et al, 2011). Ultrasound-assisted freezing (UAF) can improve the quality of frozen food without the need for additional additives, which is in line with the developing trend in the modern green food industry, and it could have promising applications in freezing of foods (Kiani et al, 2012;Saclier et al, 2010). Ultrasound cavitation can induce primary ice nucleation by the cavitation bubble collapses or movements, and promote secondary ice nucleation by breaking up the pre-existing dendritic ice crystals into smaller fragments to produce the smaller crystals with greater size uniformity (Chow et al, 2003(Chow et al, , 2004(Chow et al, , 2005Delgado et al, 2009;Delgado and Sun, 2011;Inada et al, 2001;Kiani et al, 2011Kiani et al, , 2012Petzold and Aguilera, 2009;Saclier et al, 2010;Zhang et al, 2001Zhang et al, , 2003Zheng and Sun, 2006), so that the quality of frozen food can be improved during the UAF process.…”

Influence of power ultrasound on ice nucleation of radish cylinders during ultrasound-assisted immersion freezing

“…Chow et al (2003Chow et al ( , 2004 reported that ultrasound irradiation showed its ability to initiate nucleation in supercooled aqueous solutions. Saclier et al (2010) and Ruecroft et al (2005) reported that power ultrasound was employed to trigger nucleation in industrial crystallization processes of organic molecules. Therefore, the power ultrasound used to manipulate nucleation and improve the repeatability of the process can be a promising method.…”