A simplified drop breakage model for emulsion-producing fluidic devices: Application to fluidic oscillator, helical coil and vortex-based cavitation device

Abstract

Droplet size distribution (DSD) is one of the key quality attributes of liquid–liquid emulsions. Various fluidic devices are used to generate emulsions. Most of the currently available models for estimating DSD are complicated to implement and computationally expensive. In this work, we have developed a simplified drop breakage model that is easy to implement and computationally inexpensive. This model approximates DSDs in three droplet populations, each characterised by a mean diameter. The developed drop breakage model was applied to simulate Sauter mean diameters of oil-in-water emulsions generated using three fluidic devices covering a broad range of shear rates and droplet sizes namely: vortex-based cavitation device (VD), helical coil (HC), and fluidic oscillator (FO). The variation of DSD with the number of passes (np) through the emulsion-producing fluidic devices was measured experimentally. The Sauter mean diameter (d32) and number of droplets (n) in each population were estimated from the measured DSD data. The procedure to estimate model parameters is presented. The simplified breakage model presented here was able to simulate the influence of the number of passes and operating conditions on Sauter mean diameter as well as breakage efficiency. VD was found to exhibit the highest drop breakage efficiency. FO was found to be a preferred choice for low (< 20 J/kg) energy consumption, HC for the middle range (20 – 100 J/kg) and VD for the higher (> 100 J/kg) range of energy consumption. The developed approach and model provide a simplified way of simulating the Sauter mean diameters of emulsions for a variety of emulsion-generating devices.