Multi-orifice plates

Formulation of multi-component emulsions and mixtures are of interest in chemical and industrial processes (Vilar, 2008 Vilar et al., 2008). Standard stirred tank reactors (STR) and oscillatory baffled reactors (OBR) are traditional methods for the formulation of liquid-liquid mixtures and liquid-solid emulsions. Compared with STR, oscillatory baffled reactors provide more homogeneous conditions and uniform mixing with a relatively lower shear rate (Gaidhani et al., 2005 Harrison and Mackley, 1992 Ni et al., 2000). Figure 17 is a sketch of a typical oscillatory baffled reactor. It consists of the reactor vessel, orifice plate baffles, and an oscillatory movement part. The orifice plate baffles play an important role in the OBR for the vertex generation in the flow vessels as well as the radial velocities of the emulsions and mixtures. They are equally spaced in the vessel with a free area in the center of each baffle... 

Further to single-hole orifice plates for droplet generators, multi-nozzle or multicapillary devices were already used by Dabora [21], as discussed above, for producing sprays of monodisperse droplets. For producing separate liquid jets from showerhead nozzles with nozzle holes in thin orifice plates, a minimum spacing s of the nozzle holes with diameter d must be exceeded to avoid coalescence of the jets at the downstream side of the orifice plate. According to Walzel, this distance is ensured by the relation [7]... 

The die tip can be a single orifice surrounded by air with multiple rows of orifices, or single row, multi-orifices with air plates on either side, or capillaries. 

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