- Physical Review Journals
All JournalsPhysics Magazine
Access Provided by Xinjiang University

Physical Review Fluids

Export citation

Export citation

Choose format for download:

Download Citation
  • Access by Xinjiang University

Dynamics of a Newtonian droplet in the turbulent flow of a shear thinning fluid in a microchannel

Yongbin Ji*

Elia Missi†, Jérôme Bellettre‡, and Teodor Burghelea§

Agnès Montillet∥

Patrizio Massoli

  • Department of Mechanical and Automation Engineering, The Chinese University of Hong Kong, 000000 New Territories, Hong Kong SAR, China

  • LTeN UMR CNRS 6607, Nantes Université, 1 rue Christian Pauc, CS 50609, 44306 Nantes Cedex 3, France

  • Nantes Université, Oniris, CNRS, GEPEA, UMR 6144, F-44600 Saint-Nazaire, France

  • Institute of Sciences and Technologies for Sustainable Energy and Mobility (STEMS) - CNR, Viale Marconi 4, 80125 Napoli, Italy

  • *johong.bin@gmail.com; Department of Mechanical and Automation Engineering, The Chinese University of Hong Kong, 000000 New Territories, Hong Kong SAR, China.
  • †elia.missi@univ-nantes.fr
  • ‡jerome.bellettre@univ-nantes.fr
  • §teodor.burghelea@univ-nantes.fr
  • ∥agnes.montillet@univ-nantes.fr
  • patrizio.massoli@stems.cnr.it
PDF

Phys. Rev. Fluids 8, 043301 – Published 12 April, 2023

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevFluids.8.043301

Abstract

A systematic experimental investigation of the dynamics of a Newtonian drop in microscopic cross-slot of a shear thinning and inelastic fluid (aqueous solutions of xanthan) is presented. The flows are driven at large Reynolds numbers and are relevant to efficient high-throughput emulsification in microchannels. Depending on the initial size of the drop, the driving flow rates and the rheological behavior of the continuous phase, two fundamental dynamic modes are observed. The first dynamic mode relates to the trapping of the drop. By time-resolved tracking of both the positions and the deformations of the drop over 100 distinct drops a comprehensive statistical description of the trapping events is provided. The probability of trapping when xanthan solutions are used as a continuous phase follow a common trend when the effective strength of the swirling flow motion within the impingement region is gradually increased by tuning both the flow rates and the polymer concentration, suggesting that the trapping events emerge via an imperfect bifurcation. A second phenomenon that is of particular relevance to the emulsification process relates to the breakup of drops. The dynamics of the breakup process are quantitatively described in terms of the characteristic breakup times, number of emerging daughter droplets, and drop morphology are equally dependent on both the driving flow rates and the polymer concentration. Further physical insights into the intricate coupling between the flow conditions, the shear thinning rheology of the continuous phase, and the single-drop dynamics are obtained in terms of a quantitative description of the kinematics of drop deformation. This analysis was performed using a novel tool that allows one to assess the velocity distributions along the drop contours and extract the rates of deformation, the strains corresponding to the breakup process, and the kinematic print of the flow (shear or extension). Finally, a full diagram mapping all the modes of the single-droplet dynamics is presented.

View figure in article

Physics Subject Headings (PhySH)

Article Text

References (40)

  1. L. D. Landau and E. M. Lifshitz, Statistical Physics, Part 1: Volume 5 (Course of Theoretical Physics), 3rd ed. (Butterworth-Heinemann, Oxford, 1980).
  2. Herbert Callen, Thermodynamics and an Introduction to Thermostatistics (Wiley, New York, 1985).
  3. P. K. Kilpatrick, Water-in-crude oil emulsion stabilization: Review and unanswered questions, Energy Fuels 26, 4017 (2012).
  4. T. Burghelea and V. Bertola, Transport Phenomena in Complex Fluids (Springer International Publishing, 2019).
  5. C.-X. Zhao and A. P. J. Middelberg, Two-phase microfluidic flows, Chem. Eng. Sci. 66, 1394 (2011).
  6. S. Guido, M. Simeone, and F. Greco, Effects of matrix viscoelasticity on drop deformation in dilute polymer blends under slow shear flow, Polymer 44, 467 (2003).
  7. D. C. Tretheway and L. G. Leal, Deformation and relaxation of newtonian drops in planar extensional flows of a Boger fluid, J. Non-Newtonian Fluid Mech. 99, 81 (2001).
  8. L. Derzsi, M. Kasprzyk, J. P. Plog, and P. Garstecki, Flow focusing with viscoelastic liquids, Phys. Fluids 25, 092001 (2013).
  9. M. Nooranidoost, D. Izbassarov, and M. Muradoglu, Droplet formation in a flow focusing configuration: Effects of viscoelasticity, Phys. Fluids 28, 123102 (2016).
  10. A. Gupta and M. Sbragaglia, A lattice Boltzmann study of the effects of viscoelasticity on droplet formation in microfluidic cross-junctions, Eur. Phys. J. E: Soft Matter Biol. Phys. 39, 2 (2016).
  11. Y. Ren, Z. Liu, and H. C. Shum, Breakup dynamics and dripping-to-jetting transition in a newtonian/shear-thinning multiphase microsystem, Lab Chip 15, 121 (2015).
  12. A. A. Fragkopoulos, E. Pairam, L. Marinkovic, and A. Fernández-Nieves, Breakup dynamics of toroidal droplets in shear-thinning fluids, Phys. Rev. E 97, 021101(R) (2018).
  13. T. Fu, Y. Ma, and H. Z. Li, Breakup dynamics of slender droplet formation in shear-thinning fluids in flow-focusing devices, Chem. Eng. Sci. 144, 75 (2016).
  14. H. Zhou, C. Zhu, T. Fu, Y. Ma, and H. Z. Li, Dynamics and interfacial evolution for bubble breakup in shear-thinning non-Newtonian fluid in microfluidic T-junction, Chem. Eng. Sci. 208, 115158 (2019).
  15. E. Chiarello, L. Derzsi, M. Pierno, G. Mistura, and E. Piccin, Generation of oil droplets in a non-Newtonian liquid using a microfluidic T-junction, Micromachines 6, 1825 (2015).
  16. E. Chiarello, A. Gupta, G. Mistura, M. Sbragaglia, and M. Pierno, Droplet breakup driven by shear thinning solutions in a microfluidic T-junction, Phys. Rev. Fluids 2, 123602 (2017).
  17. V. G. Agarwal, R. Singh, S. S. Bahga, and A. Gupta, Dynamics of droplet formation and flow regime transition in a T-shaped microfluidic device with a shear-thinning continuous phase, Phys. Rev. Fluids 5, 044203 (2020).
  18. R. Nehme, W. Blel, A. Montillet, J. Bellettre, and L. Marchal, Production of oil in water emulsions in microchannels at high throughput: Evaluation of emulsions in view of cosmetic, nutraceutical or pharmaceutical applications, Chem. Eng. Process. 161, 108301 (2021).
  19. G. Sworn, Handbook of Hydrocolloids (CRC Press, Boca Raton, 2009), Chap. 8, pp. 186–203.
  20. A. Roy, Synthèse et caractérisation de dérivés amphiphiles du xanthane, Ph.D. thesis, Le Havre University, 2015, https://theses.hal.science/tel-01666127/document.
  21. G. Van Aken, Food Polysaccharides and Their Applications, 2nd ed. (CRC Press, Taylor & Francis, Boca Raton, 2009), Chap. 15, pp. 521–539.
  22. A. B. Rodd, D. E. Dunstan, and D. V. Boger, Characterisation of xanthan gum solutions using dynamic light scattering and rheology, Carbohydr. Polym. 42, 159 (2000).
  23. D. J. McClements, Food Emulsions: Principles, Practices, and Techniques, 2nd ed. (CRC Press, Boca Raton, 2005), p. 609.
  24. C. J. Pipe, T. S. Majmudar, and G. H. McKinley, High shear rate viscometry, Rheol. Acta 47, 621 (2008).
  25. J. Sepulveda, A. Montillet, D. D. Valle, T. Amiar, H. Ranchon, C. Loisel, and A. Riaublanc, Experimental determination and modeling of flow curves of xanthan gum solutions over a large range of shear rates, Appl. Rheol. 31, 24 (2021).
  26. P. Guillot, P. Panizza, J.-B. Salmon, M. Joanicot, A. Colin, C.-H. Bruneau, and T. Colin, Viscosimeter on a microfluidic chip, Langmuir 22, 6438 (2006).
  27. P. Nghe, E. Terriac, M. Schneider, Z. Z. Li, M. Cloitre, B. Abecassis, and P. Tabeling, Microfluidics and complex fluids, Lab Chip 11, 788 (2011).
  28. C. W. Macosko, Rheology: Principles, Measurements, and Applications (Wiley, New York, 1994).
  29. C. Miller, Predicting non-Newtonian flow behavior in ducts of unusual cross section, Ind. Eng. Chem. Fundam. 11, 524 (1972).
  30. E. M. Nsengiyumva and P. Alexandridis, Xanthan gum in aqueous solutions: Fundamentals and applications, Int. J. Biol. Macromol. 216, 583 (2022).
  31. A. Montillet, S. Nedjar, and M. Tazerout, Continuous production of water-in-oil emulsion using micromixers, Fuel 106, 410 (2013).
  32. R. Lopes, R. O. Rodrigues, D. Pinho, V. Garcia, H. Schütte, R. Lima, and S. Gassmann, Low cost microfluidic device for partial cell separation: Micromilling approach, in 2015 IEEE International Conference on Industrial Technology (ICIT) (Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, Manhattan, NY, 2015), pp. 3347–3350.
  33. T. Thorsen, S. J. Maerkl, and S. R. Quake, Microfluidic large-scale integration, Science 298, 580 (2002).
  34. A. Belkadi, D. Tarlet, A. Montillet, J. Bellettre, and P. Massoli, Water-in-oil emulsification in a microfluidic impinging flow at high capillary numbers, Int. J. Multiphase Flow 72, 11 (2015).
  35. Y. Ji, J. Bellettre, A. Montillet, and P. Massoli, Experimental investigation on single drop breakage in two-stream impinging microchannels, Exp. Fluids 62, 17 (2021).
  36. S. van der Walt, J. L. Schönberger, J. Nunez-Iglesias, F. Boulogne, J. D. Warner, N. Yager, E. Gouillart, T. Yu, and the scikit-image contributors, Scikit-image: Image processing in Python, PeerJ 2, e453 (2014).
  37. G. G. Fuller and L. G. Leal, The effects of conformation-dependent friction and internal viscosity on the dynamics of the nonlinear dumbbell model for a dilute polymer solution, J. Non-Newtonian Fluid Mech. 8, 271 (1981).
  38. M. A. Fardin, M. Hautefeuille, and V. Sharma, Spreading, pinching, and coalescence: The ohnesorge units, Soft Matter 18, 3291 (2022).
  39. Y. Ji, J. Bellettre, A. Montillet, and P. Massoli, Fast oil-in-water emulsification in microchannel using head-on impinging configuration: Effect of swirl motion, Int. J. Multiphase Flow 131, 103402 (2020).
  40. G. I. Taylor, The formation of emulsions in definable fields of flow, Proc. R. Soc. London, Ser. A 146, 501 (1934).

Outline

Information

Phys. Rev. Fluids 8, 043301– Published 12 April, 2023
  • Received 5 May 2022
  • Accepted 20 March 2023
Crossmark - Check for updates button

©2023 American Physical Society

Sign In to Your Journals Account

Filter

Filter

Article Lookup

Enter a citation