Evaluation of Droplets Breakup Models of Emulsification Process in a Liquid-Liquid Taylor-Couette Flow

The computational fluid dynamics and the quadrature method of moments were adopted to simulate the turbulent liquid-liquid (L-L) emulsion flow inside the Taylor-Couette (TC) flow. Various breakup kernels and daughter size distribution models were tested. Generally, we found that the breakup kernel determines the mean droplet diameter, whereas the daughter size distribution function influences the DSD shape more. The coefficients in the CT and Chen breakup kernel were adjusted using the method proposed by Ravichandar et al. (2022), and it was found to be unsuitable in the studied liquid systems. The MB and Lehr breakup kernels better predicted the mean droplet diameter, but they were not applicable in highly dispersed phase viscosity systems in L-L TC flow. The MB breakup kernel and the Lehr daughter size distribution function predicted the experimental DSD very well at Re = 10400. The M-shaped Lehr daughter size distribution function showed diverse characteristics under different conditions and exhibited an optimal performance within specific parameters.