Phase inversion in agitated liquid-liquid dispersions: Anomalous effect of electrolyte

Deshpande, Kiran B and Kumar, Sanjeev (2012) Phase inversion in agitated liquid-liquid dispersions: Anomalous effect of electrolyte. In: CHEMICAL ENGINEERING SCIENCE, 78 . pp. 33-37.

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Abstract

An imbalance between breakup and coalescence of drops in turbulent liquid-liquid dispersions leads to inversion of phases the dispersed phase becomes continuous and vice versa. An increase in the rate of coalescence of drops is expected to decrease the dispersed phase fraction at which inversion occurs. In the present work, we increased the rate of coalescence of drops by adding electrolyte to pure liquid-liquid dispersions. The experiments carried out for three representative liquid-liquid systems show that contrary to the expectation the addition of an electrolyte increases the dispersed phase fraction at which inversion occurs for both, oil-in-water and water-in-oil dispersions. The step-down experiments confirm that the addition of the electrolyte increases the rate of coalescence of drops in lean dispersions under the same conditions, thereby confirming an anomalous effect of the presence of an electrolyte on the stability of dispersions. (C) 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Item Type:	Journal Article
Publication:	CHEMICAL ENGINEERING SCIENCE
Publisher:	PERGAMON-ELSEVIER SCIENCE LTD
Additional Information:	Copyright for this article belongs to Elsevier
Keywords:	Phase inversion; Coalescence; Drop; Dispersion; Extraction; Particulate processes
Department/Centre:	Division of Mechanical Sciences > Chemical Engineering
Date Deposited:	09 Aug 2012 11:22
Last Modified:	09 Aug 2012 11:22
URI:	http://eprints.iisc.ac.in/id/eprint/44908

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