Abstract
In this study, the effect of liquid height/volume on sonochemical oxidation reactions was investigated in 300 kHz sonoreactors. The gas mixture of Ar/O2 (50:50) was applied in two modes including saturation and sparging, and zero-order reaction (KI dosimetry) and first-order reaction (Bisphenol A (BPA) degradation) were used to quantitatively analyze sonochemical oxidation reactions. For the zero-order reaction, the highest sonochemical oxidation activity was obtained for the liquid height of 5𝛌, and the lowest height for both the gas saturation and sparging conditions. In addition, the sparging did not enhance the sonochemical oxidation activity for all height conditions except for 50𝛌, where very low activity was obtained. It was found that in sonochemiluminescence (SCL) images the sonochemical active zone was formed adjacent to the liquid surface for the gas sparging condition due to the formation of the standing wave field while the active zone was formed adjacent to the transducer at the bottom due to the blockage of ultrasound. For the first-order reaction, the highest activity was also obtained at 5𝛌 and the comparison based on the reactant mass was not appropriate because the concentration of the reactant (BPA) decreased significantly as the reaction time elapsed. Consequently, it was revealed that the determination of optimal liquid height (ultrasound irradiation distance) based on the wavelength of the applied ultrasound frequency was very important for the optimal design of sonoreactors in terms of reaction efficiency and reactor size.
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