Gaseous bubble nucleation under shear flow

A decompression experiment of a water solution, saturated with methane gas at about 68 atm at room temperature, was done to investigate gas bubble nucleation under shear flow. A pressure reduction from 68 atm to atmospheric pressure is well below the decompression pressure required for spontaneous bubble nucleation of the methane gas, about 120 atm. The application of a shear flow from 5 min before to 1 min after the decompression induced active bubble formation and the final gas content in the solution was reduced substantially, even with the application of low shear rate of 25/s. However, the addition of the surfactant to the solution, which reduces interfacial tension considerably, hindered the bubble nucleation process.