Surfactants kill the bubble bursting jet

Sea spay aerosol is a crucial mechanism in the ocean-atmosphere exchange. Bubble bursting at the surface of the sea water is the main source of those tiny droplets. The mechanisms underlying the droplets production have been intensively studied for homogenous liquid, and the influence of the bubble size and liquid parameters has been unified [1]. But what happens for complex liquid ? Despite the diversity of the surfactant molecules present in the oceans, their influence has been overlooked. Surfactant molecules change the static surface tension, but this is not their only action. Indeed, as they are inhomogeneously distributed in the liquid, they migrate continuously from the liquid-gas interface to the liquid bulk, and the time scale of these rearrangements is comparable to that involved in the bubble burst. In this presentation we will show that the concentration of sodium dodecyl sulfate (SDS) can drastically change the dynamic of the cavity collapse, turn off the jet and thus prevent the drop production.

[1] A. Berny, L. Deike, T. Séon, S. Popinet, Role of all jet drops in mass transfer from bursting bubbles, PRF 5, 3 (2020)