Lifetime-Driven Multihole Bursting of Oil-in-Water Emulsion Bubbles

Bubbles in nature and industry almost never burst through pure liquids; instead, they rise through media containing surfactants, dispersed oils or particulates that alter bursting dynamics and aerosol production. The present study investigates the bursting dynamics of centimetric bubbles rising through sunflower seed oil emulsions (0, 0.05, and 0.5 vol%). An imaging system was developed to simultaneously measure bubble lifetime and bursting, while digital inline holography (DIH) quantifies emitted aerosol. Both clean and emulsion bubbles follow the canonical trend: longer lifetimes drain to thinner caps and faster rim-retraction speeds. At fixed lifetime, emulsion bubble caps are thicker presumably due to oil droplet enrichment and elevated viscosity. Regardless of oil vol%, >60 % of first holes nucleate in the cap's lower third. Notably, oil droplets introduce a distinct multihole bursting regime that predominantly occurs for bubbles with lifetimes between 1.0 and 8.0 s. Within this window, the bubble cap thickness (5–48 µm) closely matches the mean size of oil droplet (~10 µm), creating optimal conditions for multiple-hole bursting. Raising oil vol% from 0.05 to 0.5 % boosts multi-hole events 17-fold and quadruples mean hole count, and nearly triples aerosol yield via intensified rim collisions. These results quantify how dispersed phases dictate film stability, rupture topology, and aerosol generation, providing scaling relevant to real-world environmental and process-engineering models.