Cavitational hydrothermal oxidation: A new remediation process. Annual progress report, September 1996--August 1997

'During the past year, the authors have continued to make substantial scientific progress on the understanding of cavitation phenomena in aqueous media and applications of cavitation to remediation processes. The efforts have focused on three separate areas: sonoluminescence as a probe of conditions created during cavitational collapse in aqueous media, the use of cavitation for remediation of contaminated water, and an addition of the use of ultrasound in the synthesis of novel heterogeneous catalysts for hydrodehalogenation of halocarbons under mild conditions. In order to gain further understanding of the conditions present during cavitation, the author has continued his studies of sonoluminescence. He has made recent breakthroughs in the use of emission spectroscopy for temperature and pressure measurement of cavitation events, which he expects to publish shortly. He has been able to measure for the first time the temperature of cavitation in water during multi-bubble cavitation in the presence of aromatic hydrocarbons. The emission from excited states of C{sub 2} in water gives temperatures that are consistent with adiabatic compressional heating, with maximum temperatures of 4,300 K. Prior measurements of cavitation temperatures in low vapor pressure nonaqueous media gave somewhat higher temperatures of 5,000 K. This work lays permanently to rest exotic mechanisms for cavitational chemistry, at least for cavitation fields.