Entrainment characteristic of liquid-liquid dispersion in a jet-driven mixing column: Substantial for process intensification in liquid-liquid extraction

The present study reports the experimental investigation on the effects of the plunging of continuous liquid jets to produce fine droplets by entrainment of the other immiscible liquids. The phenomenon of liquid entrainment is explained in this work based on the experiment using kerosene-water, 1-decanol-water, paraffin-water, and soybean oil-water in the mixing column. Effect of different operating variables such as continuous liquid jet, length of the liquid jet, the density of the mixture, the viscosity of the mixture, and volume fractions of different dispersed liquids on penetration heights of the immiscible liquid are enunciated. A mechanistic model is derived, and it is validated with the present experimental data. A general correlation is also developed for prediction of the penetration of jet for intense dispersion based on different operating variables. This current study on liquid-liquid entrainment in the mixing column may be useful for further insight into the modeling of the two-phase system in industrial applications, especially for the liquid-liquid extraction, for process intensification.