Demulsification of Oil-in-Water Emulsions in a Novel Rotating Microchannel
2020
Fan, Chunxin | Ma, Rui | Wang, Yubin | Luo, Jianhong
A novel rotating microchannel (RM) is made in our lab, which is used for the demulsification study in this paper. 2-ethylhexyl phosphoric acid-2-ethylhexyl ester (P507)–water emulsion without a surfactant and the kerosene–water emulsion with an emulsifier (sodium dodecyl sulfate) were considered. The influence of the emulsion type, inner cylinder speed, declination angle, volumetric flow rate of the emulsion, and cycle time on demulsification was investigated. The results showed that the emulsion and organic phase present good demulsification performance in parallel flow in the RM. The principle of destabilization is that the centrifugal force increases the random collision probability of droplets on the microchannel wall. By repeatedly passing through the RM three times, the total demulsification (organic phase recovery) efficiency of both the P507–water emulsion and kerosene–water emulsion exceeds 96%. A higher total demulsification efficiency is obtained by the RM at a low rotation speed (100 < R < 700 rpm), which is at least an order of magnitude less than that by conventional high-speed centrifugation (R: 4000 rpm).
显示更多 [+] 显示较少 [-]