Production of Oil-in-Water Emulsions with Varying Dispersed-Phase Content using Confined Impinging Jet Mixers

This work reports for the first time on the use of Confined Impinging Jet Mixers (CIJM) for the production of emulsions with dispersed-phase content up to 80 wt %, in both the surfactant-poor and -rich regimes, following the exposure to varying CIJM hydrodynamic conditions. It was observed computationally and experimentally that the CIJM capacity resulted strictly dependent on the mass jet flow rate (W-jet > 176 g/min) and the pre-emulsion droplet size (>10 mu m). CIJM emulsification performance remained (almost) unaffected by the variation in the oil mass fraction. All systems showed the lowest droplet size (similar to 8 mu m) and similar droplet size distributions under the highest W-jet. Conditionally onto the Tween20 availability, the emulsion d(3)(,2) was primarily determined by formulation characteristics in the surfactant poor-regime and by the CIJM energy dissipation rate in the surfactant-rich regime. In conclusion, this study offers further insights into the CIJM suitability as a realistic alternative to already-established emulsification methods.