Water drop movement on woven fiber mat surfaces due to flow of diesel fuel

• Experiment was designed to observe drop movement on fiber mats.
• Drag coefficient for water drop movement on surface of fiber mats developed.
• Correlation for minimum Reynolds number to initiate drop movement obtained.

Fuel contamination by water is one of the major factors of engine failures. Separation of water from diesel fuel is often achieved by coalescing or depth filter media. The separation performance is strongly related to the motion of drops on the surface and in the depth of a filter medium. The dynamics of the motions of drops on a filter surface are influenced by many factors such as the wetting properties of the media. Direct observations of drop movements on fiber surfaces are not well documented. Of particular interest in this work are the dynamics of drops on surfaces of hydrophobic mats that resist drop movement into the interior of the mat, forcing the drops to move on the surface of the mat. Such materials function as barriers to the dispersed phase and allow the continuous phase to move through the mat.In this paper, the motions of water drops were studied on surfaces of mats woven of polypropylene, nylon and Teflon™ (ie, polytetrafluoroethylene) fibers. Pore sizes of the mats ranged from 100 to 1000 μm and drop sizes ranged from 200 to 6000 μm. The flow of ultra low sulfur diesel fuel parallel to the mat surface provided a drag force that induced the movement of the drops. The effects of surface wettability, flow velocity, drop size, fiber size, fiber mat pore size, fiber mat orientation were considered. A correlation for a drag coefficient to estimate the average velocity of drops moving on the woven mats surfaces was derived from the flow and the material’s characteristics. In addition, another correlation was obtained for estimating the minimum velocity, or minimum Reynolds number, required to initiate the drop motion on the woven mat surfaces.

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