A unified theoretical model for breakup of bubbles and droplets in turbulent flows

Pressure has a significant effect on bubble breakup, and bubbles and droplets have very different breakup behaviors. This work aimed to propose a unified breakup model for both bubbles and droplets including the effect of pressure. A mechanism analysis was made on the internal flow through the bubble/droplet neck in the breakup process, and a mathematical model was obtained based on the Young–Laplace and Bernoulli equations. The internal flow behavior strongly depended on the pressure or gas density, and based on this mechanism, a unified breakup model was proposed for both bubbles and droplets. For the first time, this unified breakup model gave good predictions of both the effect of pressure or gas density on the bubble breakup rate and the different daughter size distributions of bubbles and droplets. The effect of the mother bubble/droplet diameter, turbulent energy dissipation rate and surface tension on the breakup rate, and daughter bubble/droplet size distribution was discussed. This bubble breakup model can be further used in a population balance model (PBM) to study the effect of pressure on the bubble size distribution and in a computational fluid dynamics‐population balance model (CFD‐PBM) coupled model to study the hydrodynamic behaviors of a bubble column at elevated pressures. © 2014 American Institute of Chemical Engineers AIChE J, 61: 1391–1403, 2015