Investigation of bubble coalescence and evolution performance on electrode surface

Abstract

The bubble evolution process on the electrode surface plays a crucial role in determining the efficiency of hydrogen production. In this work, the effective bubble nucleation site probability model is developed based on the cumulative distribution function of surface cavity to obtain the initial nucleation locations of bubbles, where the random number is adopted to get the initial bubble distribution. The volume of fluid (VOF) method is adopted to simulate bubble dynamic behaviors, and the influence of electrode surface wettability is examined. The results demonstrate that the bubble departure on the hydrophilic surface is related to the degree of bubble deformation. For the bubble growth on the hydrophilic surface, the detachment radius is smaller and the degree of deformation is more severe. The effect of surface wettability on the stable bubble number and total bubble interfacial area is not monotonous.