Influence of energy spectrum distribution on drop breakage in turbulent flows

This work focused on the influence of energy spectrum distribution on drop breakage in turbulent flows. An improved breakage model in terms of general energy spectrum function was presented. It can be coupled with available forms of energy spectrum and can be applied to the wider operating conditions such as the wider size range of drops. Unlike previous work that only considered the inertia subrange spectrum, this work simulated the breakage in the framework of wide energy spectrum and accounted for the necessity of considering the wide energy spectrum distribution. The improved model coupled with wide energy spectrum function can theoretically explain the recent experimental phenomena observed by Maass and Kraume, 2012. Determination of breakage rates using single drop experiments. Chem. Eng, Sci, 70, 146-164. That is, breakage frequency increases to a maximum and then decreases with increasing parent drop size. This is because the non-monotone energy spectnim function can distinguish three spectrum ranges, i.e., containing-energy range, inertia subrange and dissipation range, and the treatment that parent drop size always falls in the inertia subrange is no longer required in this work. While when only the energy spectrum of inertia subrange is applied to the whole size range of eddies, the predicted breakage frequency monotonously increases with parent drop diameter Therefore, the energy spectrum distribution has a crucial influence on the evolution of the breakage frequency with parent drop size. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.