Design and operation of a von Kármán reactor for droplet breakage experiments

The dispersion of an immiscible fluid in a turbulent liquid flow is a frequent occurrence in various natural and technical processes, with particular importance in the chemical, pharmaceutical, mining, petroleum, and food industries. Understanding the dynamics and breakup of liquid droplets is crucial in many scientific and engineering applications, as poor control and optimization of droplet systems results in significant financial losses annually. Although a theoretical background for describing droplet breakup exists, many assumptions still require experimental verification. Numerous mathematical models have been proposed to describe the rate coefficient of droplet breakup and child distribution functions. However, the validation and discrimination between models have been hindered by the lack of experimental data gathered under well-controlled and well characterized conditions. Thus, to validate the current models, novel equipment and methodology for optical droplet breakage research are required. In this work, a von Kármán swirling flow apparatus was designed and constructed to carry out optical based droplet breakage experiments under low-intensity, homogeneous turbulent flow. The methodology presented here describes the procedure for generating and controlling the size of the droplets being injected into the homogeneous turbulent flow field. The experiments involved introducing single droplets into the test section, using peanut oil to be the droplet phase and the continuous phase is water. Automated image analysis algorithms were utilized to determine breakage time, breakage probability, and child droplet size distribution for different turbulence intensities.