Modeling of drop sedimentation in liquid-liquid phase separation

In the chemical industry, liquid-liquid dispersions are often separated with settlers. During separation a sedimentation curve and a coalescence curve can be detected. Both curves show a characteristic, seemingly a sigmoidal S-shape curve. The settling curves can be fitted well with modified sigmoidal equations. Constants obtained from experimental data and target model were compared with the system’s physical properties. Factors to scale the sedimentation velocity seem to be linear changing with density and viscosity of the aqueous phase, while the factor to scale the separation time is converse. Moreover, this
work also proves, that sedimentation of large droplets deviates from rigid article settling due to oscillating phenomena, while small drop behave similar to particles.