A CALCULATION OF THE VISCOUS ENERGY DISSIPATION IN A CONVERGENT FLOW AND ITS APPLICATION TO THE PROCESS OF EMULSIFICATION

Abstract

The dispersion of one liquid in the other as fine globules requires energy (I) to form the extra interfacial area and (II) to overcome the visscous resistance during the disintegration of the liquid into globules via jets. The interfacial energy increases in direct proportion to the throughput of the disperse phase while much larger energies are required to overcome the viscous dissipation. The latter has been calculated first for the two  dimentional wedge flow in such limiting caves as low Re, high Re, boundary layer fiow etc., and the results are later extended
to three dimensional axisymmetric flow. It has been found that the energy of viscous dissipation varies as the square of the throughput and accounts for most of the power consumption in high speed practical emulsifiers. There is favourable agreement with the industrial data available.