Measurements of Acetone Fluorescence and Phosphorescence at High Pressures and Temperatures
Laser-induced fluorescence and phosphorescence signals of liquid acetone at pressures from 1 to 15 atm were measured and analyzed. Liquid acetone, which was preprocessed to minimize any dissolved oxygen, was injected as a low velocity jet into a pressurized chamber with either an air or nitrogen co-flow. The actone was excited at 266 nm. The laser-induced fluorescence intensity from the liquid was found to be invariant with pressure and co-flow conditions. The measured phosphorescence lifetimes were also found to independent of pressure, for both nitrogen and air environments. The phosphorescence lifetime for the liquid was measured to be ~1 μs, which is significantly smaller than the lifetime for acetone vapor (200 μs). This is likely due to self-quenching by acetone. The effect is further seen in the phosphorescence to fluorescence (P/F) ratio comparison between the liquid and vapor. The P/F ratio for liquid is 0.012, which is much smaller than the vapor value of 9.0. The overall phosphorescence intensities, however, were seen to decrease in the air co-flow cases compared to the nitrogen co-flow. Diffusion of oxygen into the liquid jet was observed, and the estimated concentration was found to be a few orders of magnitude less than the saturated concentration.
Density Measurements of a Turbulent Wake Using Acetone Planar Laser-Induced Fluorescence
The application of a planar density measurement technique for compressible flowfields based on acetone planar laser-induced fluorescence is presented. An error analysis indicates a minimum inherent uncertainty of ∼2.5% in density measurements due to uncertainty in local pressure and a total experimental uncertainty of 8%, primarily driven by shot noise due to low-signal levels. The technique is demonstrated through the visualization of the separated shear layer and turbulent wake of a wall-mounted hemisphere at a freestream Mach number of 0.78 and a Reynolds number of approximately 900,000. The flow is marked by a large-scale flapping motion of the wake and low-density vortex cores, where density drops of up to 50% of the freestream density are detected. In addition, closeup images of the shear layer near the separation point reveal the formation of lambda shocks. The density fields are used to perform aerooptic distortion calculations through spatial integration of the density field. A correlation is fou...
An anionic shell shields a cationic core allowing for uptake and release of polyelectrolytes within core-shell responsive microgels.
To realize carriers for drug delivery, cationic containers are required for anionic guests. Nevertheless, the toxicity of cationic carriers limits their practical use. In this study, we investigate a model system of polyampholyte N-isopropylacrylamide (NIPAM)-based microgels with a cationic core and an anionic shell to study whether the presence of a negative shell allows the cationic core to be shielded while still enabling the uptake and release of the anionic guest polyelectrolytes. These microgels are loaded with polystyrene sulfonate of different molecular weights to investigate the influence of their chain length on the uptake and release process. By means of small-angle neutron scattering, we evaluate the spatial distribution of polystyrene sulfonate within the microgels. The guest molecules are located in different parts of the core-shell microgels depending on their size. By combining these scattering results with UV-vis spectroscopy, electrophoretic mobility and potentiometric titrations we gain complementary results to investigate the uptake and release process of polyelectrolytes in polyampholyte core-shell microgels. Moreover, Brownian molecular dynamic simulations are performed to compare the experimental and theoretical results of this model. Our findings demonstrate that the presence of a shell still enables efficient uptake of guest molecules into the cationic core. These anionic guest molecules can be released through an anionic shell. Furthermore, the presence of a shell enhances the stability of the microgel-polyelectrolyte complexes with respect to the cationic precursor microgel alone.