Biosurfactants Change the Thinning of Contaminated Bubbles at Bacteria-Laden Water Interfaces

• Main Authors: Poulain, Stephane (Contributor), Bourouiba, Lydia (Contributor)
• Other Authors: Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering (Contributor), Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Mechanical Engineering (Contributor), Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Fluid Dynamics of Disease Transmission Laboratory (Contributor)
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: American Physical Society, 2018-11-19T17:29:55Z.
• Subjects: Article
• Online Access: Get fulltext

 Bubbles reside at the water surface before bursting, emitting droplets that can contain chemicals and pathogens linked to disease and contamination. We discover that bacterial secretions enhance the lifetime of bubbles. We also reveal and elucidate two distinct regimes of thinning for such contaminated bubbles. Initially, marginal regeneration governs their thinning rate, similarly to clean water bubbles. However, due to their enhanced lifetime, it is eventually evaporation that governs their thinning, thus also dramatically decreasing their thickness at burst. We derive and experimentally validate the expression for the critical timescale at which the transition between the two regimes occurs. The shift in thinning law makes the droplets produced by contaminated bubbles smaller, faster, and more numerous than those produced by clean bubbles. Our findings suggest that microorganisms can manipulate the aging physics of surface bubbles to enhance their own water-to-air dispersal.