This work focuses on understanding the fundamentals of CO2 nanobubbles and their capability to impact water chemistry due to their unique gas-liquid interface interactions. It was hypothesized that carbon dioxide nanobubbles could increase buffering capacity and effective gas transfer within water solution.CO2 nanobubbles were generated using a nanobubble generator membrane pump system with CO2 gas intake. The analysis was done by recording CO2 nanobubbles characteristics and the physiochemical response to the introduction of the nanobubbles to the water at different generation times (10, 30, 50, and 70 min) and benchmarked against traditional macrobubbles of CO2 for the same amount of delivered gas. Additional analysis was done on the effect of pH on the nanobubbles due to the carbonate system increasing the pH. The system had both CO2 in the gas phase as nanobubbles and liquid as dissolved solvents therefore the effective concentration of CO2 was evaluated by measuring the buffer capacity (β). The size distribution of nanobubbles during the experiments was measured by Nanoparticle Track Analysis (NTA) where this also determined the concentration of gas as nanobubbles. Findings reported were that the mass transfer coefficient (KLa) showed a dramatically increase by 11-fold for the same volume of gas delivered when using nanobubbles. The β values obtained for nanobubbles were 7 times higher than that of traditional bubbles which can lead to significant source of CO2 availability by using the nanobubble method. Nanobubbles, consequently, undergo mass loss at higher pH corresponding to mass transfer process due to concentration gradient at the surrounding nanobubbles.

Paradigm shift of CO2 buffering capacity on watering chemistry from CO2 nanobubbles

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