Production of emulsion in tank mixer with sieve bottom

This paper presents a unique equipment design which can be used in creating liquid-liquid dispersions, named the sieve emulsification mixer (SEM). SEM consists of a tank equipped with sieve at the bottom, impeller and circulating pump. In built experimental set-up the set of experiments has been performed, which assessed influence of four process parameters: feed flow rate, recirculation flow rate, rotational speed of impeller and processing time. The obtained results prove that with use of SEM it is possible to produce emulsions with droplets of the Sauter mean diameter close to the mesh size (i.e. 20 μm), therefore this technology could be a good alternative to membrane-based emulsification processes.