Experimental and Numerical Investigation of the Isothermal Stratification of a Polydisperse Emulsion with the Use of the Quasi-Monodisperse Approach

An experimental investigation and a mathematical simulation of the gravitational stratification of a polydisperse water–oil emulsion in a rectangular cell have been performed. Histograms of the size distribution of droplets in the initial emulsion have been obtained using the approach based on the analysis of the images of an emulsion sample, made on an optical microscope at different magnifications. The concentration distributions of droplets along the height of the cell have been constructed using results of the digital processing of the photos of the emulsion, obtained in the experiment on its gravitational stratification. A methodology of numerical simulation of the stratification of a polydisperse emulsion system, based on the representation of this system as a set of quasi-monodisperse subsystems and on the combined solution of the equations for the sedimentation of droplets different in size in the one-liquid approximation, is proposed.