Acoustic cavitation, in simple terms, is the growth and collapse of preexisting microbubbles under the influence of an ultrasonic field in liquids. The cavitation bubbles can be characterized by the dynamics of oscillations and the maximum temperatures and pressures reached when they collapse. These aspects can be studied both experimentally and theoretically for a single bubble system. However, in a multibubble system, the formation of bubble streamers and clusters makes it difficult to characterize the cumulative properties of these bubbles. In this overview, some recently developed experimental procedures for the characterization of acoustic cavitation bubbles have been discussed.

The efficient production of nanoemulsions, with oil droplet sizes of less than 100nm would facilitate the inclusion of oil soluble bio-active agents into a range of water based foods. Small droplet sizes lead to transparent emulsions so that product appearance is not altered by the addition of an oil phase. In this paper, we demonstrate that it is possible to create remarkably small transparent O/W nanoemulsions with average diameters as low as 40nm from sunflower oil. This is achieved using ultrasound or high shear homogenization and a surfactant/co-surfactant/oil system that is well optimised. The minimum droplet size of 40nm, was only obtained when both droplet deformability (surfactant design) and the applied shear (equipment geometry) were optimal. The time required to achieve the minimum droplet size was also clearly affected by the equipment configuration. Results at atmospheric pressure fitted an expected exponential relationship with the total energy density. However, we found that this relationship changes when an overpressure of up to 400kPa is applied to the sonication vessel, leading to more efficient emulsion production. Oil stability is unaffected by the sonication process.

Acoustic bubble-size distributions have been determined using a pulsed ultrasound method at different ultrasound powers and frequencies. It was observed that the mean bubble size increased with increasing acoustic power and decreased with increasing ultrasound frequency. It was also recognized that the mean size of bubbles emitting sonoluminescence was greater than those producing sonochemiluminescence indicating that the two processes take place in different populations of cavitation bubbles in the system.