The Simulation of High Pressure Nucleation Experiments in Diffusion Cloud Chamber

TL;DR

This paper investigates high-pressure nucleation in diffusion cloud chambers, showing that a new coalescence-based model better explains experimental data and resolves discrepancies with classical theory.

Contribution

It introduces a semi-quantitative model of droplet growth and coalescence that explains nucleation behavior at high pressures, addressing previous theoretical-experimental gaps.

Findings

Mathematical model explains experimental regularities

Coalescence mechanism accounts for low nucleation rates

Diffusion interactions influence nucleation dynamics

Abstract

For high- pressure nucleation experiments in upward diffusion cloud chamber, there is the great deviation of predictions of classical nucleation theory from experimental results; the discrepancy is more than 10 orders of magnitude of nucleation rate. Experimental data for 1-propanol vapor are under investigation in this paper. It was shown that mathematical model of a single droplet growth and motion semi- quantitatively explained all experimentally discovered regularities. For explanations low nucleation rate versus high supersaturation, the coalescence mechanism in gaseous phase has been proposed. As result of coalescence the vast majority of newly formed clusters evaporate and restore vapor density and temperature profile in DCC. The observed picture with low nucleation rate is result of diffusion interaction between small clusters and droplets in nucleation zone for high- pressure nucleation experiments.