Determination of breakage rates of oil droplets in a continuous oscillatory baffled tube

Following on our previous studies, the population balance model that was built on the earlier work from Jares and Prochazka [Break-up of droplets in Karr reciprocating plate extraction column. Chemical Engineering Science 42, 283-292] was modified to include the viscoelastic effect on droplet size distribution and to evaluate the breakage rates of oil-in-water dispersions in a continuous oscillatory baffled tube. In this work, experiments were performed showing that the breakage of droplets is the dominant mechanism in the system, and the physical properties of different oils had no significant influence on droplet size distributions. Under those conditions the model can be used to focus only on breakage rate constants, keeping the number of fitted parameters in the modelling process to a minimum. The droplet breakage results from this work suggest that the oscillation amplitude has more influence on the breakage rates than the oscillation frequency. This work is a major extension and includes droplet data from our previous studies so that the breakage rates can be compared; and the consistency of the rate constants is examined. (c) 2006 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.