Kinetics of Gas Discharging in a Glass of Champagne:  The Role of Nucleation Sites

In this study, bubble production in a glass of champagne was used as a common tool to illustrate and better understand the nonclassical heterogeneous bubble nucleation from pre-existing gas cavities, referred as type IV nucleation in a recent review article (Jones et al. Adv. Colloid Interface Sci. 1999, 80, 27−50). Close-ups of nucleation sites were done during the repetitive and clockwork CO2 bubble production process. Then, by using the mass transfer equations suited to the case of rising champagne bubbles, the growth rate (dR/dt) of expanding bubbles during ascent was modeled and connected with the physicochemical parameters of the liquid medium and especially with the supersaturating ratio S of the solution. This theoretical growth rate was found to be in very good accordance with our experimental results. Several bubble trains of the glass wall were “followed”, during the gas discharging process, until bubble production stops through lack of dissolved gas. Evidence for a critical rising bubble growth rate below which bubble production stops at a given nucleation site enabled us to deduce indirectly the radius of curvature of the meniscus entrapped into the particle acting as a nucleation site.