Attainable superheat of ethane-methane solutions

Methods of measuring lifetime and continuous pressure decrease were used to study kinetics of spontaneous boiling-up of superheated ethane-methane solutions. The attainable superheats of solutions at two pressure values (1.0 and 1.6 MPa) and two concentrations of methane (2.1 and 6.0 mole %) were determined experimentally in the range of nucleation rate J = 1·10⁴–3·10⁸ s^?1m^?3. At temperatures 266.5, 270.0, and 273.15 K, the attainable stretching of the studied solutions was measured. The experimental results were compared with the theory of homogeneous nucleation. At nucleation rates J ≥ 2.5·10⁶ s^?1m^?3, there is a fair agreement of the theory and experiment. The discrepancy in attainable superheat temperatures T _n does not exceed 0.8 K. It is shown that significant underheating of solution to theoretical values T _n at J < 2.5·10⁶ s^?1m^?3 cannot be bound only with heterogeneous nucleation but is conditioned by other factors as well.