Dispersion of water into oil in a rotor–stator mixer. Part 2: Effect of phase fraction

Abstract

In Part 1 (Rueger and Calabrese, 2013), we monitored dilute water-in-oil dispersions in a batch Silverson L4R rotor–stator mixer to establish breakage mechanisms and develop a mechanistic basis for correlation of equilibrium mean drop size. In this study (Part 2) we consider the effect of water phase fraction under similar processing conditions, thereby requiring consideration of coalescence. Most of the work on the effect of phase fraction in stirred vessels was done with a low-viscosity continuous phase in turbulent flow with inertial subrange scaling (d>η). For that case drop size increases linearly with phase fraction, ϕ. In this study, viscous oils comprised the continuous phase, with water as the drop phase. The equilibrium DSD was measured in both laminar and turbulent flow conditions. The diameter of the largest drops was always less than the Kolmogorov microscale (d<η). A much greater increase (than the aforementioned linear relationship) in drop size with phase fraction was observed for ϕ≤0.05; including cases where an oil soluble surfactant was present and where metal mixing head surfaces were rendered hydrophobic by treatment with silane functional groups. It is argued that this significantly greater dependence on ϕ is due to the flow field being locally laminar near the drops with coalescence rate being strongly affected by the collision efficiency, which depends on the viscosity of both phases. The presence of surfactant decreased drop size. The silane treatment decreased drop size; possibly by altering water drop interactions with mill head surfaces. Additional experiments were performed at higher phase fraction, where surfactant was required to stabilize the emulsion. The equilibrium drop size was found to plateau for 0.10<ϕ<0.50. The high phase fraction behavior is attributed to the competing rates of coalescence and breakage and their dependence on ϕ and drop size.