Two Phase Flow of Emulsions

Although NMRI is a very well-suited experimental technique for quantifying emulsion properties such as velocity profiles, droplet concentration distributions and microstructural information, several alternative techniques can provide similar or complementary information to that obtained by NMRI. Two such techniques, ultrasonic spectroscopy and diffusing wave spectroscopy, can be employed in the characterization of concentrated emulsions in situ and without dilution [45], 

In terms of measuring emulsion microstructure, ultrasonics is complementary to NMRI in that it is sensitive to droplet flocculation [54], which is the aggregation of droplets into clusters, or floes, without the occurrence of droplet fusion, or coalescence, as described earlier. Flocculation is an emulsion destabilization mechanism because it disrupts the uniform dispersion of discrete droplets. Furthermore, flocculation promotes creaming in the emulsion, as large clusters of droplets separate rapidly from the continuous phase, and also promotes coalescence, because droplets inside the clusters are in close contact for long periods of time. Ideally, a full characterization of an emulsion would include NMRI measurements of droplet size distributions, which only depend on the interior dimensions of the droplets and therefore are independent of flocculation, and also ultrasonic spectroscopy, which can characterize flocculation properties. 

There are two main methods to measure velocity fields and profiles using NMRI time-of-flight velocimetry (TOF) and phase encoding velocimetry. In this section these methods are briefly described with a discussion of how they were used to perform accurate velocity measurements in oil-in-water emulsions. These methods 

The tags correspond to the displacement after the delay time from the initial state shown by the dotted line at the center line. Here, the delay time was 0.5 s and the image was obtained in approximately 5 minutes. 

In a PFG pulse sequence, if the molecules are free to move, it can be shown that the normalized signal S/So can be described by an exponential decay as follows, 

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Two-Phase Theory of Fluidization The two-phase theory of fluidization assumes that all gas in excess of the minimum bubbling velocity passes through the bed as bubbles [Toomey and Johnstone, Chem. Eng. Prog. 48 220 (1952)]. In this view of the fluidized bed, the gas flowing through the emulsion phase in the bed is at the minimum bubbling velocity, while the gas flow above U j, is in the bubble phase. This view of the bed is an approximation, but it is a helpful way... 

Thus, the bubbling region, which is an important feature of beds operating at gas velocities in excess of the minimum fluidising velocity, is usually characterised by two phases — a continuous emulsion phase with a voidage approximately equal to that of a bed at its minimum fluidising velocity, and a discontinous or bubble phase that accounts for most of the excess flow of gas. This is sometimes referred to as the two-phase theory of fluidisation. 

The distribution of gas flow in the fluidized bed is important for the analysis of the fundamental characteristics of transport properties in the bed. One common method to estimate the gas flow division is based on the two-phase theory of fluidization, which divides the superficial gas flow in the bed into two subflows, i.e., bubble phase flow and emulsion phase flow, as shown in Fig. 9.14. According to the theory, the flow velocity can be generally expressed as... 

The two-phase theory of fluidization has been extensively used to describe fluidization (e.g., see Kunii and Levenspiel, Fluidization Engineering, 2d ed., Wiley, 1990). The fluidized bed is assumed to contain a bubble and an emulsion phase. The bubble phase may be modeled by a plug flow (or dispersion) model, and the emulsion phase is assumed to be well mixed and may be modeled as a CSTR. Correlations for the size of the bubbles and the heat and mass transport from the bubbles to the emulsion phase are available in Sec. 17 of this Handbook and in textbooks on the subject. Davidson and Harrison (Fluidization, 2d ed., Academic Press, 1985), Geldart (Gas Fluidization Technology, Wiley, 1986), Kunii and Levenspiel (Fluidization Engineering, Wiley, 1969), and Zenz (Fluidization and Fluid-Particle Systems, Pemm-Corp Publications, 1989) are good reference books. 

Let us consider a shallow fluidized bed combustor with multiple coal feeders which are used to reduce the lateral concentration gradient of coal (11). For simplicity, let us assume that the bed can be divided into N similar cylinders of radius R, each with a single feed point in the center. The assumption allows us to use the symmetrical properties of a cylindrical coordinate system and thus greatly reduce the difficulty of computation. The model proposed is based on the two phase theory of fluidization. Both diffusion and reaction resistances in combustion are considered, and the particle size distribution of coal is taken into account also. The assumptions of the model are (a) The bed consists of two phases, namely, the bubble and emulsion phases. The voidage of emulsion phase remains constant and is equal to that at incipient fluidization, and the flow of gas through the bed in excess of minimum fluidization passes through the bed in the form of bubbles (12). (b) The emulsion phase is well mixed in the axial... 

In more realistic situations there is a certain probability of the emulsion droplets coalescing with the bulk oil phase or a part of the bulk oil becoming emulsified. The physics of such complex fiow conditions is not well understood at present. The starting point of describing such a fiow would be to treat it as a normal two-phase flow and use the concept of relative permeability and a model for the rheological properties of the emulsion phase. To account for the material exchange between the bulk phase and the emulsion phase, some form of droplet population balance model will be needed. 

A first estimate for Qb is given by the two-phase theory of fluidization, proposed by Toomey and Johnstone [130] and developed by Davidson and Harrison [29, 30]. In this theory a bubbling fluidized bed consists of two zones or phases, referred to as the bubble phase consisting of pure gas and the emulsion phase consisting of uniformly distributed particles in a supporting gas steam. The emulsion phase is assumed to be operating at minimum fluidization conditions (7 m/> while the bubble phase carries the remaining gas flow U ... 

A simple two-phase model of fluidized bed drying treats the fluidized bed to be composed of a bubble phase (dilute phase) and an emulsion phase (dense phase). The bubble phase contains no particles or the particles are widely dispersed. This model assumes that all gas in excess of minimum fluidization velocity, umf, flows through the bed as bubbles, whereas the emulsion phase stays stagnant at the minimum fluidization conditions [47]. Figure 8.5 shows a schematic diagram of the simple two-phase model. 

Two-phase pressure drop can typically be correlated with two models, i.e. homogeneous or separated. Homogeneous fluid models are well suited to emulsions and flow with negligible surface forces, where the two-phase mixture can be treated as a single fluid with appropriately averaged physical properties of the individual phases. Separated flow models consider that the two phases flow continuously and separated by an interface across which momentum can be transferred (Angeli and Hewitt 1999). The simplest patterns that can be easily modelled are separated and annular flow (Brauner 1991 Rovinsky et al. 1997 Bannwart 2001). In this case, momentum balances are written for both phases with appropriate interfacial and wall friction factors. 

The two-phase theory of fluidization was first proposed by Toomey and Johnstone (1952). The model assumed that the aggregative fluidization eonsists of two phases, i.e., the particulate (or emulsion) phase and the bubble phase. The flow rate through the emulsion phase is equal to the flow rate for minimum fluidization, and the voidage is essentially constant at Sn,f. Any flow in excess of that required for minimum fluidization appears as bubbles in the separate bubble phase. Mathematically, the two-phase theory can be expressed as... 

Another representative two-phase model is the one proposed by Partridge and Rowe (1966). In this model, the two-phase theory of Toomey and Johnstone (1952) is still used to estimate the visible gas flow, as in the model of Davidson and Harrison (1963). However, this model considers the gas interchange to occur at the cloud-emulsion interphase, i.e., the bubble and the cloud phase are considered to be well-mixed, the result being called bubble-cloud phase. The model thus interprets the flow distribution in terms of the bubble-cloud phase and the emulsion phase. With the inclusion of the clouds, the model also allows reactions to take place in the bubble-cloud phase. The rate of interphase mass transfer proposed in the model, however, considers the diffusive mechanism only (i.e., without throughflow) and is much lower than that used in the model of Davidson and Harrison (1963). 

The two-phase model of Section 13.5.1 is used, neglecting reaction in the bubble phase, and axial diffusion in the emulsion phase. In the bubble phase (plug flow). 

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