The Phenomenon of Boiling: A Combination of Heat and Pressure

Boiling is a fascinating phenomenon that occurs when water is heated to its boiling point, causing it to vaporize and turn into steam. But what exactly happens when we heat up water to 100 degrees centigrade? To understand this phenomenon, let's consider the role of pressure in boiling. When atmospheric pressure pushes down on the surface of the water, it keeps the molecules tightly packed together. This is because we haven't got enough energy from heat to push against that pressure and allow the molecules to spread out.

If the atmospheric pressure was lowered to much less than one atmosphere, we would see the molecules spreading out once again, creating bubbles of water vapor. This is indeed a phenomenon of how water can boil away at room temperature. And if the surface pressure was increased once again, it would force the bubble into a smaller and smaller state until it imploded, pushing those molecules back together again into a liquid form of water. Therefore, ending the boiling process.

Ultrasonic Waves and Cavitation Bubbles

But what happens when we use ultrasonic waves to create cavitation bubbles? Behind each wave, there's that low pressure, which is why water can boil in this area at low temperatures. These cavitation bubbles are very short-lived because as the ultrasonic waves move up through the fluid, the pressure at the front edge of each wave is greater. This is similar to what happens when we saw the imploding bubble earlier, where the increased pressure forces the bubble into a smaller and smaller state until it implodes.

As the wave that follows moves into the cavitation bubbles, it causes them to implode and release a pressure wave of energy outwards. When we put an item for cleaning inside the ultrasonic tank and turn it on, if we could see down to the microscopic level, we'd see that these bubbles are being produced and imploding throughout the whole time. This is happening in all around the item that's been cleaned, which means wherever the water can reach, this is likely to be happening.

The Cleaning Process: How Implosion Bubbles Work

So, why exactly do these imploding bubbles make the cleaning process so good? Firstly, remember when we said when the bubbles implode they create that pressure wave of energy. This pressure wave agitates and loosens the dirt and crud on the surface of the item being cleaned. Additionally, the bubbles can stick to the side of the item being cleaned and then when it implodes, it scrapes off the dirt. The dirt, of course, is emitted into the fluid.

The effect of imploding cavitation bubbles is so powerful and abrasive that when boat propellers create their own version of them, it can actually wear away at the metal and create pitting damage to the trailing edge of the propeller. But now we can see how the ultrasonic cleaner creates cavitation bubbles and how the bubbles can loosen the dirt.

Aiding the Cleaning Process

The ultrasonic cleaner is aided and made easier to remove this dirt in the presence of hotter water, which helps to dissolve the dirt especially in the presence of a detergent. This is why some ultrasonic tanks have increased heat settings and it's recommended that a detergent is used. The combination of hot water and detergent makes the cleaning process much better.

The Role of Cavitation Bubbles in Ultrasonic Cleaning

Now, we can see how the ultrasonic cleaner works. The article concludes by thanking the viewers for watching and invites them to like and subscribe if they haven't already.

"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: enif you'd like to know how an ultrasonic cleaner really cleans your carburetor in its very own unique and interesting way and whether or not it's worth using one then keep watching because i'm going to explain now hello and welcome ultrasonic cleaners are more popular today than ever before and there's so much information out there showing us that they do actually work i know from using my ultrasonic cleaner that if i want to clean a carburetor i can place it in turn it on and in a few minutes i can take it out and more often than not it looks cleaner than if i scrubbed it myself better still it cleans inside the carburetor throughout all of those little tiny fuel holes but how does it really accomplish this level of deep cleaning by simply being submerged in a fluid well there are three main factors that affect this one is the temperature of the fluid and the other is the addition of a cleaning agent a detergent in the fluid and this is the obvious combination when we come to clean most things we usually use warm water with some kind of soap or detergent whether it is to have a shower or whether it is to clean the dishes etc so using a warm water and a detergent will have a big impact on how clean the carburetor is after it's been inside the ultrasonic cleaner but the very name ultrasonic cleaner suggests that there's something very special about this cleaner something of course ultrasonic and so this is the special third cleaning factor of this cleaner and it's the fascinating intricacies of how it does so which i'm now going to explain and so to begin this explanation we'll have to take a look through the ultrasonic cleaner at its structure and its components so part of its important makeup consists of a circuit board wired to a transducer and the transducer is firmly fixed to the bottom of the fluid tank and then we've got power in from the mains electricity supply and it's the transducer that activates and vibrates at an ultrasonic frequency when the cleaner is turned on and because the transducer is firmly fixed to the bottom of the fluid tank this in turn vibrates the bottom of the tank at the same frequency and ultimately creates ultrasonic waves in the fluid in order to be classed as ultrasonic however the frequency from the transducer has to be 20 kilohertz or more and this particular one is 40 kilohertz and it is of course amongst these waves that the item to be cleaned is submerged but these waves are so small it can be difficult to notice them with the naked eye and even though they are themselves difficult to see their energies can be seen clearly when i place this plastic container with tiny polystyrene balls within it into the ultrasonic tank and then turn it on we can clearly see the energy of those waves moving the polystyrene that's because the ultrasonic waves moving through the fluid hits the plastic container making it vibrate and in turn vibrating the polystyrene so what's the significance of these ultrasonic waves then why is it better that they're there well let's take a look at them and what they do well if we could see inside this tank in such a way that we could see these waves we would see them moving out through the fluid like this away from the transducer that's creating them and so let's pause there and see what's important about these waves well each of them experiences high pressure on this side as they move up through the fluid at that ultrasonic speed and whilst this side experiences high pressure due to the waves forcing through the fluid this causes behind them a pocket of low pressure although not moving at ultrasonic speed a boat propeller experiences these two types of pressures as the propeller turns this edge is under high pressure as it cuts through the water and this movement causes a low pressure on the trailing edge so similarly we can see how these two pressures are generated by the ultrasonic waves but it's what becomes of this low pressure area that is key to the ultrasonic cleaners ability to clean that sets it apart from any other cleaning process and what happens is fundamental to the reason it cleans so well because here this low pressure creates tiny little microscopic bubbles these are known as cavitation bubbles and they're called this because each one is a cavity inside the water so what's inside the cavities what's inside each one of these bubbles well it's simply steam or water vapor from the water boiling but boiling point does that mean the temperature inside the fluid has risen to 100 degrees centigrade actually no the temperature might be low much lower than 100 degrees centigrade in fact it can do this with temperatures less than half that of boiling point this amazing ability to reach boiling point with temperatures much cooler than 100 degrees centigrade is something that the ultrasonic cleaner can in fact achieve and to explain how this can happen we need to talk about pressures at sea level the pressure pushing down upon us from all of those air molecules above us that are attracted to the gravitational pull of the earth's core is 14.7 pounds per square inch and so this 14.7 pounds per square inch is also referred to as one atmosphere and so it's here at sea level at 14.7 psi or one atmosphere that water will only boil at 100 degrees centigrade or 212 fahrenheit which is of course a boiling point familiar to us and so interestingly if we could lower this atmospheric pressure from 14.7 psi to something much lower than the temperature required to boil this water would not need to be as high as 100 degrees centigrade it would boil at temperatures much lower and so it's the pressures here behind the tail of each ultrasonic wave that are low enough to create this type of boiling at temperatures lower than 100 degrees centigrade inside the ultrasonic tank but why is it that lower pressures can allow water to boil at lower temperatures well to answer this we'll have to look inside the water at the molecules that make it up and it's of no surprise to us that water is h2o that means each molecule of water is made of two hydrogen atoms and one oxygen atom and one important feature is the way the atoms and molecules are bonded within water in fact there are two types of bonds that are vital to the way water is made up and it's one of these bonds that resists pressure and the other one that gives way to pressure that allows water to turn to water vapor and boil at lower temperatures and so in keeping the unique structure of the water molecule there are strong bonds that exist between the hydrogen atoms and the oxygen atom these bonds are known as covalent bonds and therefore these keep the strong structure of the water molecule and without them the water molecule just wouldn't exist so then it's these bonds that are not affected by boiling temperatures but if temperatures have an effect on whether water boils or not then what effect does it actually have in order to do so well this is something to do with the second important bond related to the water molecule and this is called the hydrogen bond rather than holding the structure of the molecule together like the covalent bonds the hydrogen bonds join water molecules to other water molecules these bonds are not as strong as covalent bonds and so can be affected by boiling temperatures so the joining together of all of these water molecules by hydrogen bonds is the formation of water as the liquid we know it and it's temperature that's one of the main factors of whether or not these molecules stay held together and why is that well we know that if we apply enough heat to a beaker of water then bubbles will start to rise in the water as it boils but how exactly is the heat making it do this well as the heat rises up through the water it excites all of those water molecules making them move with that heat energy and so as the heat increases the energy of each molecule also increases this causes the hydrogen bonds between them to break as each molecule moves away from each other and it's this separation of the water molecules that gives rise to the bubble of water vapor or steam but that sea level pressure of 14.7 psi or one atmosphere also has an effect here to see how this comes about let's take our water in a beaker and add some heat but with the addition of heat or not there's always one atmosphere of pressure pushing down onto the surface of the water and so what has to happen is that the heat has to rise inside the beaker enough in this case 100 degrees centigrade in order to give enough energy to those molecules to allow them to move apart and push against this one atmosphere of pressure so that means if we could increase this pressure enough way beyond one atmosphere then it would push these molecules back together even if we're at the temperatures of 100 degrees centigrade basically there'd be no steam no water vapor no bubbles no boiling it would just revert back to water in its liquid form as we know it in fact this phenomenon of reaching temperatures above 100 degrees centigrade with water without boiling is something that's more common to us than we might first think because this is indeed how pressure cookers work basically there's the water reservoir that's heated up and then there's the lid creating pressure preventing those water molecules from expanding away from each other which keeps them in their liquid state for longer and so the boiling point for a pressure cooker like this can be as high as 120 degrees and so now we've explained that the phenomenon of boiling is a result of both heat and pressures it might be a little clearer to see how water would boil at lower temperatures so making this example of water at room temperature we now know that the atmospheric pressure pushing down on the surface of the water is enough to keep those molecules tightly packed together because we haven't got enough energy from heat in order to push against that pressure to allow the molecules to spread out but if this pressure was lowered to much less than one atmosphere then we'd see the molecules spreading out once again and so just like before it creates bubbles of water vapor and so this is indeed a phenomena of how water can boil away at room temperature and if the surface pressure was increased once again the pressure would force the bubble into a smaller and smaller state until it implodes forcing all of those water molecules back together again back into a liquid form of water and therefore ending the boiling process and we can see now with our ultrasonic waves that behind each wave there's that low pressure and this is why water can boil in this area at low temperatures but these cavitation bubbles are very short-lived because as the ultrasonic waves moves up through the fluid as we saw earlier the pressure at the front edge of each wave is greater and just like we saw before where the pressure was increased at room temperature imploding the bubbles and pushing those molecules back together the same happens here as a result of that increased pressure and so as the wave that follows moves into the cavitation bubbles it causes them to implode and it's these imploding bubbles that are the vital part of the ultrasonic cleaning process and without them the ultrasonic cleaning process as we know it just wouldn't exist because unlike an exploding bubble which just keeps getting larger and larger until it pops as we saw with the imploding bubble this keeps getting smaller and smaller and smaller until it pops releasing a pressure wave of energy outwards so when we put our item for cleaning inside the ultrasonic tank and then turn it on if we could see down to the microscopic level we'd see that these bubbles are being produced and imploding and produced and imploding throughout the whole time the ultrasonic cleaner is in use and this is happening in and all around the item that's been cleaned so that means wherever the water can reach this is likely to be happening and this is why the ultrasonic cleaner is so good at cleaning inside carburetors through those little tiny fuel holes as well as it's as good as cleaning the outside but why exactly do these imploding bubbles make the cleaning process so good well firstly remember when we said when the bubbles implode they create that pressure wave of energy well it's this pressure wave that agitates and loosens the dirt and crud on the surface of the item that's been cleaned as well as this it's said that the bubbles can stick to the side of the item being cleaned and then when it implodes it scrapes dirt off the surface in this way and then the dirt of course is emitted into the fluid in fact so powerful and abrasive is the effect of imploding cavitation bubbles that when boat propellers create their own version of them it can actually wear away at the metal and create this kind of pitting damage to the trailing edge of the propeller but now we can see how the ultrasonic cleaner creates cavitation bubbles and how the bubbles can loosen the dirt we can also see how it would be aided and made easier to remove this dirt in the presence of hotter water which of course would help to dissolve the dirt especially in the presence of a detergent which as a whole would help to remove this dirt so much better and so now you know why some ultrasonic tanks have increased heat settings and also why it's recommended that a detergent is used but this is how to the best of my knowledge and beliefs how the ultrasonic cleaner works and so now i want to thank you so much for watching this video please give me a like and subscribe if you haven't done already thank you for watching youif you'd like to know how an ultrasonic cleaner really cleans your carburetor in its very own unique and interesting way and whether or not it's worth using one then keep watching because i'm going to explain now hello and welcome ultrasonic cleaners are more popular today than ever before and there's so much information out there showing us that they do actually work i know from using my ultrasonic cleaner that if i want to clean a carburetor i can place it in turn it on and in a few minutes i can take it out and more often than not it looks cleaner than if i scrubbed it myself better still it cleans inside the carburetor throughout all of those little tiny fuel holes but how does it really accomplish this level of deep cleaning by simply being submerged in a fluid well there are three main factors that affect this one is the temperature of the fluid and the other is the addition of a cleaning agent a detergent in the fluid and this is the obvious combination when we come to clean most things we usually use warm water with some kind of soap or detergent whether it is to have a shower or whether it is to clean the dishes etc so using a warm water and a detergent will have a big impact on how clean the carburetor is after it's been inside the ultrasonic cleaner but the very name ultrasonic cleaner suggests that there's something very special about this cleaner something of course ultrasonic and so this is the special third cleaning factor of this cleaner and it's the fascinating intricacies of how it does so which i'm now going to explain and so to begin this explanation we'll have to take a look through the ultrasonic cleaner at its structure and its components so part of its important makeup consists of a circuit board wired to a transducer and the transducer is firmly fixed to the bottom of the fluid tank and then we've got power in from the mains electricity supply and it's the transducer that activates and vibrates at an ultrasonic frequency when the cleaner is turned on and because the transducer is firmly fixed to the bottom of the fluid tank this in turn vibrates the bottom of the tank at the same frequency and ultimately creates ultrasonic waves in the fluid in order to be classed as ultrasonic however the frequency from the transducer has to be 20 kilohertz or more and this particular one is 40 kilohertz and it is of course amongst these waves that the item to be cleaned is submerged but these waves are so small it can be difficult to notice them with the naked eye and even though they are themselves difficult to see their energies can be seen clearly when i place this plastic container with tiny polystyrene balls within it into the ultrasonic tank and then turn it on we can clearly see the energy of those waves moving the polystyrene that's because the ultrasonic waves moving through the fluid hits the plastic container making it vibrate and in turn vibrating the polystyrene so what's the significance of these ultrasonic waves then why is it better that they're there well let's take a look at them and what they do well if we could see inside this tank in such a way that we could see these waves we would see them moving out through the fluid like this away from the transducer that's creating them and so let's pause there and see what's important about these waves well each of them experiences high pressure on this side as they move up through the fluid at that ultrasonic speed and whilst this side experiences high pressure due to the waves forcing through the fluid this causes behind them a pocket of low pressure although not moving at ultrasonic speed a boat propeller experiences these two types of pressures as the propeller turns this edge is under high pressure as it cuts through the water and this movement causes a low pressure on the trailing edge so similarly we can see how these two pressures are generated by the ultrasonic waves but it's what becomes of this low pressure area that is key to the ultrasonic cleaners ability to clean that sets it apart from any other cleaning process and what happens is fundamental to the reason it cleans so well because here this low pressure creates tiny little microscopic bubbles these are known as cavitation bubbles and they're called this because each one is a cavity inside the water so what's inside the cavities what's inside each one of these bubbles well it's simply steam or water vapor from the water boiling but boiling point does that mean the temperature inside the fluid has risen to 100 degrees centigrade actually no the temperature might be low much lower than 100 degrees centigrade in fact it can do this with temperatures less than half that of boiling point this amazing ability to reach boiling point with temperatures much cooler than 100 degrees centigrade is something that the ultrasonic cleaner can in fact achieve and to explain how this can happen we need to talk about pressures at sea level the pressure pushing down upon us from all of those air molecules above us that are attracted to the gravitational pull of the earth's core is 14.7 pounds per square inch and so this 14.7 pounds per square inch is also referred to as one atmosphere and so it's here at sea level at 14.7 psi or one atmosphere that water will only boil at 100 degrees centigrade or 212 fahrenheit which is of course a boiling point familiar to us and so interestingly if we could lower this atmospheric pressure from 14.7 psi to something much lower than the temperature required to boil this water would not need to be as high as 100 degrees centigrade it would boil at temperatures much lower and so it's the pressures here behind the tail of each ultrasonic wave that are low enough to create this type of boiling at temperatures lower than 100 degrees centigrade inside the ultrasonic tank but why is it that lower pressures can allow water to boil at lower temperatures well to answer this we'll have to look inside the water at the molecules that make it up and it's of no surprise to us that water is h2o that means each molecule of water is made of two hydrogen atoms and one oxygen atom and one important feature is the way the atoms and molecules are bonded within water in fact there are two types of bonds that are vital to the way water is made up and it's one of these bonds that resists pressure and the other one that gives way to pressure that allows water to turn to water vapor and boil at lower temperatures and so in keeping the unique structure of the water molecule there are strong bonds that exist between the hydrogen atoms and the oxygen atom these bonds are known as covalent bonds and therefore these keep the strong structure of the water molecule and without them the water molecule just wouldn't exist so then it's these bonds that are not affected by boiling temperatures but if temperatures have an effect on whether water boils or not then what effect does it actually have in order to do so well this is something to do with the second important bond related to the water molecule and this is called the hydrogen bond rather than holding the structure of the molecule together like the covalent bonds the hydrogen bonds join water molecules to other water molecules these bonds are not as strong as covalent bonds and so can be affected by boiling temperatures so the joining together of all of these water molecules by hydrogen bonds is the formation of water as the liquid we know it and it's temperature that's one of the main factors of whether or not these molecules stay held together and why is that well we know that if we apply enough heat to a beaker of water then bubbles will start to rise in the water as it boils but how exactly is the heat making it do this well as the heat rises up through the water it excites all of those water molecules making them move with that heat energy and so as the heat increases the energy of each molecule also increases this causes the hydrogen bonds between them to break as each molecule moves away from each other and it's this separation of the water molecules that gives rise to the bubble of water vapor or steam but that sea level pressure of 14.7 psi or one atmosphere also has an effect here to see how this comes about let's take our water in a beaker and add some heat but with the addition of heat or not there's always one atmosphere of pressure pushing down onto the surface of the water and so what has to happen is that the heat has to rise inside the beaker enough in this case 100 degrees centigrade in order to give enough energy to those molecules to allow them to move apart and push against this one atmosphere of pressure so that means if we could increase this pressure enough way beyond one atmosphere then it would push these molecules back together even if we're at the temperatures of 100 degrees centigrade basically there'd be no steam no water vapor no bubbles no boiling it would just revert back to water in its liquid form as we know it in fact this phenomenon of reaching temperatures above 100 degrees centigrade with water without boiling is something that's more common to us than we might first think because this is indeed how pressure cookers work basically there's the water reservoir that's heated up and then there's the lid creating pressure preventing those water molecules from expanding away from each other which keeps them in their liquid state for longer and so the boiling point for a pressure cooker like this can be as high as 120 degrees and so now we've explained that the phenomenon of boiling is a result of both heat and pressures it might be a little clearer to see how water would boil at lower temperatures so making this example of water at room temperature we now know that the atmospheric pressure pushing down on the surface of the water is enough to keep those molecules tightly packed together because we haven't got enough energy from heat in order to push against that pressure to allow the molecules to spread out but if this pressure was lowered to much less than one atmosphere then we'd see the molecules spreading out once again and so just like before it creates bubbles of water vapor and so this is indeed a phenomena of how water can boil away at room temperature and if the surface pressure was increased once again the pressure would force the bubble into a smaller and smaller state until it implodes forcing all of those water molecules back together again back into a liquid form of water and therefore ending the boiling process and we can see now with our ultrasonic waves that behind each wave there's that low pressure and this is why water can boil in this area at low temperatures but these cavitation bubbles are very short-lived because as the ultrasonic waves moves up through the fluid as we saw earlier the pressure at the front edge of each wave is greater and just like we saw before where the pressure was increased at room temperature imploding the bubbles and pushing those molecules back together the same happens here as a result of that increased pressure and so as the wave that follows moves into the cavitation bubbles it causes them to implode and it's these imploding bubbles that are the vital part of the ultrasonic cleaning process and without them the ultrasonic cleaning process as we know it just wouldn't exist because unlike an exploding bubble which just keeps getting larger and larger until it pops as we saw with the imploding bubble this keeps getting smaller and smaller and smaller until it pops releasing a pressure wave of energy outwards so when we put our item for cleaning inside the ultrasonic tank and then turn it on if we could see down to the microscopic level we'd see that these bubbles are being produced and imploding and produced and imploding throughout the whole time the ultrasonic cleaner is in use and this is happening in and all around the item that's been cleaned so that means wherever the water can reach this is likely to be happening and this is why the ultrasonic cleaner is so good at cleaning inside carburetors through those little tiny fuel holes as well as it's as good as cleaning the outside but why exactly do these imploding bubbles make the cleaning process so good well firstly remember when we said when the bubbles implode they create that pressure wave of energy well it's this pressure wave that agitates and loosens the dirt and crud on the surface of the item that's been cleaned as well as this it's said that the bubbles can stick to the side of the item being cleaned and then when it implodes it scrapes dirt off the surface in this way and then the dirt of course is emitted into the fluid in fact so powerful and abrasive is the effect of imploding cavitation bubbles that when boat propellers create their own version of them it can actually wear away at the metal and create this kind of pitting damage to the trailing edge of the propeller but now we can see how the ultrasonic cleaner creates cavitation bubbles and how the bubbles can loosen the dirt we can also see how it would be aided and made easier to remove this dirt in the presence of hotter water which of course would help to dissolve the dirt especially in the presence of a detergent which as a whole would help to remove this dirt so much better and so now you know why some ultrasonic tanks have increased heat settings and also why it's recommended that a detergent is used but this is how to the best of my knowledge and beliefs how the ultrasonic cleaner works and so now i want to thank you so much for watching this video please give me a like and subscribe if you haven't done already thank you for watching you\n"