Droplet size appearance

Kumar et al. studied droplet break-up in a stirred vessel (turbine stirrer) at = 0.1 —0.8 and with an excess of surfactant (SDS). They reasoned that in various regions in the vessel different regimes prevailed, and the regime leading to the smallest drop size would be determinant. Up to 0.5, droplet size appeared to... 

The energetics and kinetics of film formation appear to be especially important when two or more solutes are present, since now the matter of monolayer penetration or complex formation enters the picture (see Section IV-7). Schul-man and co-workers [77, 78], in particular, noted that especially stable emulsions result when the adsorbed film of surfactant material forms strong penetration complexes with a species present in the oil phase. The stabilizing effect of such mixed films may lie in their slow desorption or elevated viscosity. The dynamic effects of surfactant transport have been investigated by Shah and coworkers [22] who show the correlation between micellar lifetime and droplet size. More stable micelles are unable to rapidly transport surfactant from the bulk to the surface, and hence they support emulsions containing larger droplets. 

Both effects can produce coarser atomization. However, the influence of Hquid viscosity on atomization appears to diminish for high Reynolds or Weber numbers. Liquid surface tension appears to be the only parameter independent of the mode of atomization. Mean droplet size increases with increasing surface tension in twin-fluid atomizers (34). is proportional to CJ, where the exponent n varies between 0.25 and 0.5. At high values of Weber number, however, drop size is nearly proportional to surface tension. 

Water-in-oil microemulsions (w/o-MEs), also known as reverse micelles, provide what appears to be a very unique and well-suited medium for solubilizing proteins, amino acids, and other biological molecules in a nonpolar medium. The medium consists of small aqueous-polar nanodroplets dispersed in an apolar bulk phase by surfactants (Fig. 1). Moreover, the droplet size is on the same order of magnitude as the encapsulated enzyme molecules. Typically, the medium is quite dynamic, with droplets spontaneously coalescing, exchanging materials, and reforming on the order of microseconds. Such small droplets yield a large amount of interfacial area. For many surfactants, the size of the dispersed aqueous nanodroplets is directly proportional to the water-surfactant mole ratio, also known as w. Several reviews have been written which provide more detailed discussion of the physical properties of microemulsions [1-3]. 

Research on water explosion inhibiting systems is providing an avenue of future protection possibilities against vapor cloud explosions. British Gas experimentation on the mitigation of explosions by water sprays, shows that flame speeds of an explosion may be reduced by this method. The British Gas research indicates that small droplet spray systems can act to reduce the rate of flame speed acceleration and therefore the consequential damage that could be produced. Normal water deluge systems appear to produce too large a droplet size to be effective in explosion flame speed retardation and may increase the air turbulence in the areas. 

Thus, both the mean droplet size and the size distribution may be predicted using these correlations [Eqs. (26), (27), (28), or (29) and Eqs. (30), (31)] for given process parameters and material properties. For a given atomizer design, the standard deviation of droplet size distribution has been found to increase with the melt flow rate, but appears to be less sensitive to the gas flow rated5 Moreover, the variation of the standard deviation is very atomizer- and melt-specific. An empirical correlation which fits with a wide range of atomization data has the following form ... 

This equation reflects the possibility to measure [3,0] and Dg, both diameters being directly deduced from the experimental droplet size distributions. Of course, this procedure is to be applied at long times, that is, in the regime governed by coalescence ( >j > D ). In Fig. 5.7, it appears that CO exhibits a regular decrease with time. 

The biochemical stability of food colloids is now attracting considerable research interest because of its obvious relevance to the delivery and bioavailability of nutrients and nutraceuticals in vivo. In particular, the processes of enzymatic hydrolysis occurring at the triglyceride-water interface appear important because most dietary lipids are present in the human stomach at some stage in the form of emulsified droplets (size 20-40 pm) (Armand et al., 1994 McClements et al., 2008 Dickinson, 2008 Singh et cil, 2009 McClements and Decker, 2009). 

Oil droplet size In water. From Eq. 1, it can be seen that separation of oil droplets from water is easier than separation of water droplets from oil. Oil viscosity is 5 to 20 times that of water. Primary purpose of three-phase separation is to prepare oil for further treating. Field experience indicates that oil content in produced water from a three-phase separator, sized for water removal from oil, can be expected to be between a few hundred and 2,000 mg/1. This water will require further treating which will be discussed in another section. Sizing for oil droplet removal from the water phase does not appear to be a meaningful criteria. 

In making droplet-size tests liquid paraffin wax was atomized to produce a spray that appeared exactly like that produced with jet fuel. The small liquid-wax droplets solidified rapidly in the air, and the entire wax spray was directed into a funnel-like bath of flowing water, from which a sample of the water-borne spray was collected in a suitable vessel. 

Quality attributes of food emulsions, such as appearance, stability, and rheology, are strongly influenced by the size of the droplets that they contain (Friberg and Larsson, 1997 McClements, 1999). For example, the creaming stability of an emulsion decreases as droplet size increases. Analytical techniques that provide quantitative information about droplet size are therefore required to aid in the development and production of high-quality emulsion-based food products. A variety of analytical techniques have been developed to measure droplet size, e.g., laser diffraction, electrical pulse counting, sedimentation techniques, and ultrasonic spectrometry (McClements, 1999). These techniques are used for fundamental research, product development, and quality assurance. This unit focuses on the two most commonly used techniques in the food industry, laser diffraction and electrical pulse counting. 

The visual appearance of an emulsion reflects the influence of droplet size on light scattering, and varies from milky-white-opaque,... 

It can be seen from the figures that the size distributions of spray droplets become narrower after impingement, or, in other words, the droplet sizes become more uniform than before. Such a variation is observed in most of the runs, although some exceptions also appeared (about 10% in all the runs). As is well known, the uniformity of droplet sizes, or inversely, the scattering of the size distribution can be expressed with the parameter Standard Deviation , a, which is the defined as... 

The emulsifying properties of these polymeric surfactants demonstrate that the chemical structure influences the kinetic behaviour of interfacial tension reduction. An increase of sulfopropyl moieties reduces the interfacial tension slower while an increase in 2-hydroxy-3-phenoxy propyl moieties reduces the interfacial tension faster. The ionic strength of the emulsion appears to increase the rate of tension reduction. The average droplet size of oil-in-water emulsions in presence of previously dissolved 2-hydroxy-3-phenoxy propyl sulfopropyl dextran is around 180 nm immediately after preparation and increases with time. The presence of ionic moieties appeared to facilitate emulsification at low polymer concentrations due to electrostatic repulsions between the oil droplets [229]. 

Not all emulsions exhibit the classical milky opaqueness with which they are usually associated. A tremendous range of appearances is possible, depending upon the droplet sizes and the difference in refractive indices between the phases. An emulsion can be transparent if either the refractive index of each phase is the same, or alternatively, if the dispersed phase is made up of droplets that are sufficiently small compared with the wavelength of the illuminating light. Thus an O/W microemulsion of even a crude oil in water may be transparent. If the droplets are of the order of 1 pm diameter a dilute O/W emulsion will take on a somewhat milky-blue cast if the droplets are very much larger then the oil phase will become quite distinguishable and apparent. Physically the nature of the simple emulsion types can be determined by methods such as [95] ... 

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