Prediction of emulsion drop size distributions in colloid mills

•Developed a population balance equation model for emulsification in colloid mill.•Derived the function for drop breakage frequency in simple shear flow.•Proposed a new daughter drop distribution function for capillary drop breakage.•Used a viscosity model to predict the emulsion viscosity at high shear rates.•Demonstrated good agreement between measured and predicted drop size distributions.

Colloid mills are the most common emulsification devices used in industry for products with high oil content. Drop breakage occurs when the emulsion is flowed through a small gap between rotor and stator under laminar shear conditions. In this paper, we have developed the first full population balance equation (PBE) model for colloid mills and used the model to better understand the relevant drop breakage mechanisms. The PBE model accounted for both drop breakage and coalescence and generated predictions of the drop size distribution after each pass of the emulsion through the colloid mill. Drops were assumed to break due to capillary instability with the distribution of drop sizes resulting from each breakage event studied in detail. A viscosity model was developed to predict the emulsion viscosity as function of the oil fraction and the high shear rates commonly used. Nonlinear optimization was used to estimate adjustable parameters in the breakage and coalescence functions to minimize the least-squares difference between predicted and measured drop size distributions for high oil-to-surfactant emulsions. We concluded that experimentally observed drop volume distributions could not be predicted with daughter drop distribution functions reported in the literature. Improved predictions were obtained using a new bimodal distribution function which captured drop breakage into multiple, nearly uniform daughter drops with a large number of small satellite drops. We also investigated model extensibility for changes in the oil fraction, emulsion flow rate and rotor speed.

Graphical abstractFigure optionsDownload full-size imageDownload high-quality image (223 K)Download as PowerPoint slide