Experimental Study of Water Jet Break-Up in and Supercritical Carbon Dioxide

Water jets in systems at low pressure have been frequently studied and some models for the prediction of spray cone angle (theta/2), intact-surface break-up length (L-1), and intact-core break-up length (L-2) have been developed. Complete studies of jets in supercritical receiving medium have not been carried out; for this reason, in this work, an experimental study on the observation of water jet break-up in supercritical carbon dioxide has been proposed. Different operating conditions were tested and jet characteristics in terms of theta/2, L-1, and L-2 were studied. The obtained data were first fitted using the models proposed in the literature; then, a model was developed in this work, which takes into account the influence of pressure in the evaluation of the spray cone angle. The proposal of a pressure-dependent correlation revealed to be effective in the description of the sprays generated in supercritical conditions.