The Effects of Hydrodynamics Characteristics on Mass Transfer During Droplet Formation Using Computational Approach

Abstract

For the reason that flow expansion model (developed in our previous work) for evaluating mass transfer during droplet formation involves with manifest hydrodynamic aspects, in this research computational simulation of this phenomenon was done for characterization of hydrodynamics effects on the mass transfer during droplet formation. For this purpose, an Eulerian volume tracking computational code based on volume of fluid (VOF) method was developed to solve the transient Navier-Stokes equations for the axisymmetric free-boundary problem of a Newtonian liquid that is dripping vertically and breaking as drops into another immiscible Newtonian fluid. The effects of hydrodynamics effects on the mass transfer during droplet formation have been discussed in the three features, including: 1- The intensity of the interaction between two phases 2-The strength and positions of the main vorticities on the nozzle tip 3-The effects of local interfacial vorticities (LIV). These features are considered to explain the complexities of drop formation mass transfer between Ethyl Acetoacetate (presaturated with water) as an organic dispersed phase and water as continuous phase for two big and small nozzle sizes (0.023 and 0.047 cm, ID) which have different level of mass transfer rate particularly in first stages of formation time.