DIFFUSION CLOUD CHAMBER

In the existing theories of homogeneous nucleation it is accustomed to consider that a concentration of a noncondensible (carrier) gas does not affect the rate of nucleation. Moreover, it is supposed that the higher the gas concentration, the closer the nucleation process is to the isothermal one for which classical nucleation theory (CNT) was originally built. However, in paper (Bertelsmann et al., 1996) and many others on the basis of the experimental data on homogeneous condensation of HZO, DZO and some alcohols in an inert gaseous atmosphere it was discovered that the critical supersaturation linearly increases with the increase of the carrier gas pressure PO. Besides, with the temperature decrease a slope of isotherms S,(Po) becomes more abrupt. That is why the aim of this work was to consider in more detail the kinetic processes in DCC using some ideas specific for the kinetics of chemical reactions. In particular, as pointed out in (Frank-Kamenetskii, 1947) w h en a certain chemical reaction realizes in nature its observed rate is determined on the one hand by a real chemical kinetics on the surface of the interacting particles, but on the other hand by the rate of transport of the reacting medium to this surface due to the molecular or convective (in particular