Acoustic wave propagation in fluids with coupled chemical reactions

This investigation presents a hydroacoustic theory which accounts for sound absorption and dispersion in a multicomponent mixture of reacting fluids (assuming a set of first-order acoustic equations without diffusion) such that several coupled reactions can occur simultaneously. General results are obtained in the form of a biquadratic characteristic equation (called the Kirchhoff-Langevin equation) for the complex propagation variable chi = - (α + iω/c) in which α is the attenuation coefficient, c is the phase speed of the progressive wave and ω is the angular frequency. Computer simulations of sound absorption spectra have been made for three different chemical systems, each comprised of two-step chemical reactions using physico-chemical data available in the literature. The chemical systems studied include: (1) water-dioxane, (2) aqueous solutions of glycine and (3) cobalt polyphosphate mixtures. Explicit comparisons are made between the exact biquadratic characteristic solution and the approximate equation (sometimes referred to as a Debye equation) previously applied to interpret the experimental data for the chemical reaction contribution to the absorption versus frequency. The relative chemical reaction and classical viscothermal contributions to the sound absorption are also presented. Several discrepancies that can arise when estimating thermodynamic data (chemical reaction heats or volume changes) for multistep chemical reaction systems when making dilute solution or constant density assumptions are discussed