Consideration of low viscous droplet breakage in the framework of the wide energy spectrum and the multiple fragments

Abstract

An improved model for low viscous droplet breakage has been developed. Unlike the previous work that considered the inertia subrange and adopted the assumption of binary breakage, this work considered the breakage of droplets in the framework of the multiple fragments and the wide energy spectrum (i.e., including the dissipation range, the inertia subrange, and the energy containing range simultaneously). The previous interactions between the droplet and the surrounding fluids have been considered through introducing the interaction forces. The effect of the surface deformation and oscillation resulting from these interactions on the constraints of multiple breakages has been accounted for. These factors have been neglected in the existing models. The wide energy spectrum distribution was found to have an important effect on the nonmonotone evolution of breakage frequency with increasing parent droplet size. The cumulative volume fractions predicted by this work showed a better agreement with the experimental data. © 2015 American Institute of Chemical Engineers AIChE J, 61: 2147–2168, 2015