Hybrid quasi-steady thermal lattice Boltzmann model for studying the rheology of surfactants contaminated emulsions

Thermal conditions determine the outcome of the physical and transport properties of emulsions during their various processing phases. A better understanding of the intricate relationship between thermal, surfactants and hydrodynamics can help in the optimization of these processes during the production of emulsions. To investigate the outcome of coupling thermal, surfactants and hydrodynamics on emulsions behavior, a robust quasi-steady thermal-surfactants numerical scheme is presented and used here. To validate the model, the rheological behavior of oil-in-water system was investigated. The numerical results matched well the experimental results of similar oil-in-water system under steady state thermal conditions. Furthermore, it is shown that, the proposed numerical model can handle cases with transient thermal conditions while maintaining good accuracy.