Orifice drop formation from

XIV. Drop Formation from Vertically Oriented Orifices. 346... 

The phenomena of uniform drop formation from a stream of liquid issuing from on orifice were noted as early as 1833 by Savart [2] and described mathematically by Lord Raleigh [3,4] and Weber [5]. In this type of system that is based on their observations, fluid under pressure issues from an orifice, typically 40-80 pm in diameter, and breaks up into uniform drops by the amplification of capillary waves induced onto the jet, usually by an electromechanical device that causes the pressure oscillations to propagate through the fluid. The drops break off from the jet in the presence of an electrostatic field called the charging filed, and thus acquire an electrostatic charge. The charged drops are directed to their... 

G. Bream, U. Lackermeier Drop formation from a vibrating orifice generator driven by mexlulated electrical signals, Phys. Fluids 9, 3658-3669 (1997). 

In the absence of surface tension influences, the drop formation at vertical orifices is expressed by the equation given for bubble formation. The force due to kinetic energy of the liquid is neglected as its component is zero in the vertical direction. The drop ascends right from the beginning according to the equation of motion and detaches when it has covered a distance equal to the diameter of the nozzle. 

Fig. 13. (a) Observed and (b) computed formation of a droplet at an orifice in a pulsed sieve-plate extraction column. (Reprinted from Chemical Engineering Science, Volume 50, Ohta M., et al. Numerical analysis of a single drop formation process under pressure pulse condition, pp. 2923-2931, copyright 1995, with permission from Elsevier Science.)... 

Dislribttlors Most spray columns operate with the drops being formed at the ends of jets from the dispersed phase inlet distributor. The orifices or nozzles for introducing the dispersed phase are usually not smaller than 0.13 cm (0.05 in) in diameter in order to avoid clogging, nor larger than 0.64 cm (0.25 in) in order to avoid formation of... 

Figure 8.5 shows a Venturi meter. The theory is the same as for the orifice meter but a much higher proportion of the pressure drop is recoverable than is the case with orifice meters. The gradual approach to and the gradual exit from the orifice substantially eliminates boundary layer separation. Thus, form drag and eddy formation are reduced to a minimum. 

The slow formation of a drop at a submerged circular orifice or nozzle will result in a drop size, predicted by equations for determining interfacial tension by the drop-weight method. At the instant a slowly forming drop breaks away from a nozzle, the force balance may be written... 

When water-wet gas expands rapidly through a valve, orifice or other restriction, hydrates form due to rapid gas cooling caused by adiabatic (Joule-Thomson) expansion. Hydrate formation with rapid expansion from a wet line commonly occurs in fuel gas or instrument gas lines. Hydrate formation with high pressure drops can occur in well testing, start-up, and gas lift operations, even when the initial temperature is high, if the pressure drop is very large. 

The dynamic methods depend on the fact that certain vibrations of a liquid cause periodic extensions and contractions of its surface, which are resisted or assisted by the surface tension. Surface tension therefore forms an important part, or the whole, of the restoring force which is concerned in these vibrations, and may be calculated from observations of their periodicity. Dynamic methods include determination of the wave-length of ripples, of the oscillations of jets issuing from non-circular orifices, and of the oscillations of hanging drops. Dynamic methods may measure a different quantity from the static methods, in the case of solutions, as the surface is constantly being renewed in some of these methods, and may not be old enough for adsorption to have reached equilibrium. In the formation of ripples there is so little interchange of material between the surface and interior, and so little renewal of the surface, that the surface tension measured is the static tension ( 12. ... 

Droplet production by droplet stream generators takes place by pinch-off of liquid portions from jets. A trivial prerequisite for the application of this technique of drop production is, therefore, the formation of a laminar liquid jet from a round orifice or nozzle. The conditions of liquid flow through the orifice required to form a laminar jet are discussed in Sect. 26.3 below. Once the laminar jet is formed, its linear temporal instability against a disturbance with a non-dimensional wave number ka = 2nalX (with the wavelength X of the disturbance and the jet radius a) in a gaseous ambient medium under the action of surface tension, neglecting both the liquid viscosity and the dynamic interaction with the ambient gas, is described by the dispersion relation... 

The drop generator established by Yim et al. for producing solder balls is shown in Fig. 26.5 as an example for a device suitable for use with melts [20]. This device combines a heatable reservoir for the metal melt with a solenoid-driven vibrator, which transmits oscillations by a disk mounted at the end of a shaft to the molten metal bath. The orifice piece is manufactured from ruby. The solidification of the solder drops is controlled by immersing them into a silicone oil bath. Particles produced with this device are nicely spherical, with typical diameters of 780 pm and a standard deviation of 26 pm. Apart from the spherical particles, irregular shapes are also observed, which are due to coalescence of the drops, either in the drop stream before entry into the oil bath, or in the oil bath prior to formation of a solid shell on their surface. 

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