Coalescence behaviour of water droplets in water‐oil interface under pulsatile electric fields

Coalescence behaviour of water droplets in water-oil interface under pulsatile electric fields

In this research, the deformation of water droplets in sunflower oil-interface under pulsatile electric field was studied experimentally. Three types of coalescence were observed:(i) complete coalescence, (ii) incomplete coalescence and (iii) no-coalescence. The first type is desirable because of leaving no secondary droplets. The second type that produced secondary droplets which caused by necking process, due to extreme elongation of droplets (mostly small droplets), was undesirable; because the small droplets were more difficult to coalesce and remove. The no-coalescence was caused by very fast coalescence and extensive pushing of droplet into the continuous phase. In this work the process was operated with the utilization of a batch cylindrical separator with high voltage system. The lower part of the cylinder was filled with the aqueous phase and its top part was filled with sunflower oil to form an interface between the two phases. The effects of electric field strength, frequency, and waveform types were investigated. It was found that, the ramp-ac waveform was the best waveform, avoiding the production of secondary droplets and in this case the frequency also played an important role.