Emulsification in turbulent flow: 3. Daughter drop-size distribution.

Systematic set of experiments is performed to clarify the effects of several factors on the size distribution of the daughter drops, which are formed as a result of drop breakage during emulsification in turbulent flow. The effects of oil viscosity, etaD, interfacial tension, sigma, and rate of energy dissipation in the turbulent flow, epsilon, are studied. As starting oil-water premixes we use emulsions containing monodisperse oil drops, which have been generated by membrane emulsification. By passing these premixes through a narrow-gap homogenizer, working in turbulent regime of emulsification, we monitor the changes in the drop-size distribution with the emulsification time. The experimental data are analyzed by using a new numerical procedure, which is based on the assumption (supported by the experimental data) that the probability for formation of daughter drops with diameter smaller than the maximum diameter of the stable drops, d<d(MAX), is proportional to the drop number concentrations in the final emulsions, which are obtained after a long emulsification time. We found that the breakage of a single "mother" drop leads to the formation of multiple daughter drops, and that the number and size distribution of these daughter drops depend strongly on the viscosity of the dispersed phase. Different scaling laws are found to describe the experimental results for the oils of low and high viscosity. The obtained results for the daughter drop-size distribution are in a reasonably good agreement with the experimental results reported by other authors. In contrast, the comparison with several basic model functions, proposed in the literature, does not show good agreement and the possible reasons are discussed. The proposed numerical procedure allows us to describe accurately the evolution of all main characteristics of the drop-size distribution during emulsification, such as the number and volume averaged diameters, and the distributive and cumulative functions by number and by volume. The procedure allowed us to clarify the relative importance of the drop breakage rate constant and of the daughter drop-size distribution for the evolution of the various mean diameters.