Spontaneous Nucleation in Superheated Helium Solutions in Methane

Abstract

The kinetics of spontaneous boiling of liquid methane saturated with helium has been studied in experiments on measuring the lifetime of the superheated liquid. The temperature dependence of nucleation frequency J has been determined in a range from 10⁴ to 10⁸ s^–1 m^–3 at pressures $p$ = 1.6 and 2.0 MPa and helium concentrations in liquid methane $x$ = 0.06 and 0.10 mol %. The experimental results have been compared with the data of the classical nucleation theory. As in the case of pure methane, the solution superheating temperatures reached in the experiments at J > 4 × 10⁶ s^–1 m^–3 appear to be systematically lower (by 0.6–1.0 K) than their theoretical values. It has been shown that the discrepancy between the theoretical and experimental data is associated with the size dependence of the surface tension at the critical bubble–solution interface.