Coalescence kernel droplet

If the continuous phase is a liquid, the main obstacle to coalescence is the drainage of the film of liquid in the small space in between the two particles. The efficiency is in these cases usually quantitied as a function (generally a negative exponential function) of the ratio of the characteristic time for droplet contact and film drainage. For example, in the case of small bubbles coalescing due to turbulent velocity fluctuations the coalescence kernel assumes the form (Buffo et al, 2012 Laakkonen et al, 2006 Petitti et al, 2010)... 

The fundamental derivation of the population balance equation is considered general and not limited to describe gas-liquid dispersions. However, to employ the general population balance framework to model other particulate systems like solid particles and droplets appropriate kernels are required for the particle growth, agglomeration/aggregation/coalescence and breakage processes. Many droplet and solid particle closures are presented elsewhere (e.g., [96, 122, 25, 117, 75, 76, 46]). 

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