A method for estimating effective coalescence rates during emulsification from oil transfer experiments

The Oil Transfer Technique (OTT) was developed by Taisne et al. [1] to measure coalescence during emulsification and has been applied since in several studies. One of the main drawbacks of this technique is that it only gives a qualitative measure of coalescence. This paper proposes a new evaluation method of OTT experimental results for estimating qualitative coalescence rates, e.g. for investigating the scaling of coalescence with emulsification parameters (such as homogenizing pressure, and emulsifier concentration). The method is based on comparison with simulated OTT experiments using bivariate Population Balance Equation models. Simulations have been performed under a wide variety of conditions in order to investigate the influence of assumptions on coalescence and fragmentation kernels. These investigations show that the scaling of coalescence rates could be determined accurately when the scaling of efficient residence time of drops in the active region of homogenization is known. The proposed evaluation method is also exemplified by analyzing OTT data from two previously published studies. (C) 2012 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.