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Spray drying is an important industrial process to produce powdered milk, in which concentrated milk is atomized into small droplets and dried with hot gas. The characteristics of the produced milk powder are largely affected by agglomeration, combination of dry and partially dry particles, which in turn depends on the outcome of a collision between droplets. The high total solids (TS) content and the presence of milk proteins cause a relatively high viscosity of the fed milk concentrates, which is expected to largely influence the collision outcomes of drops inside the spray. It is therefore of paramount importance to predict and control the outcomes of binary droplet collisions. Only a few studies report on droplet collisions of high viscous liquids and no work is available on droplet collisions of milk concentrates. The current study therefore aims to obtain insight into the effect of viscosity on the outcome of binary collisions between droplets of milk concentrates. To cover a wide range of viscosity values, three milk concentrates (20, 30 and 46 % TS content) are investigated. An experimental set-up is used to generate two colliding droplet streams with consistent droplet size and spacing. A high-speed camera is used to record the trajectories of the droplets. The recordings are processed by Droplet Image Analysis in MATLAB to determine the relative velocities and the impact geometries for each individual collision. The collision outcomes are presented in a regime map dependent on the dimensionless impact parameter and Weber (We) number. The Ohnesorge (Oh) number is introduced to describe the effect of viscosity from one liquid to another and is maintained constant for each regime map by using a constant droplet diameter (d∼700μm). In this work, a phenomenological model is proposed to describe the boundaries demarcating the coalescence-separation regimes. The collision dynamics and outcome of milk concentrates are compared with aqueous glycerol solutions ex

A complete knowledge of the effect of droplet viscosity on droplet-droplet collision outcomes is essential for industrial processes such as spray drying. When droplets with dispersed solids are dried, the apparent viscosity of the dispersed phase increases by many orders of magnitude, which drastically changes the outcome of a droplet-droplet collision. However, the effect of viscosity on the droplet collision regime boundaries demarcating coalescence and reflexive and stretching separation is still not entirely understood and a general model for collision outcome boundaries is not available. In this work, the effect of viscosity on the droplet-droplet collision outcome is studied using direct numerical simulations employing the volume of fluid method. The role of viscous energy dissipation is analysed in collisions of droplets with different sizes and different physical properties. From the simulations results, a general phenomenological model depending on the capillary number (Ca, accounting for viscosity), the impact parameter (B), the Weber number (We), and the size ratio (Δ) is proposed.

When spray drying a liquid slurry such as milk, collisions between droplets, partially dried particles and completely dry particles are important because coalescence, agglomeration and breakup events influence the size and morphology of the produced powder. When modelling such a spray drying process, it is therefore important to be able to predict the outcomes of individual binary collisions. Both binary dry particle collisions and binary droplet collisions have individually been thoroughly researched over the years due to their widespread occurrence. The importance of understanding binary particle-droplet collisions has been emphasized more recently. However, the number of available studies is limited and simulation studies usually focus on relatively high capillary number. A theory explaining the transition between different regimes is still lacking. The goal of this study is to provide an experimental data set at low capillary number. These results can be used to validate future theories and simulations. To produce and record particle-droplet collisions, an experimental setup that enables synchronized release of both a particle and a droplet was used. One single hanging droplet was released from above onto a particle that initially was held in place by vacuum suction. A high speed camera was synchronized with the setup, and recorded the collisions. Image files were then analysed in Matlab to find velocities and sizes of the particle and droplet before and after impact. The contrast of particle and droplet against the illuminated background was a key factor in succeeding with this. Different collision outcomes were identified as either agglomeration (merging), where the whole droplet would stick to the surface of the particle, or a stretching separation (breaking), where the droplet collides with the particle in an oblique position and stretches out until a part of the droplet detaches from the liquid sticking to the particle. The formation of satellite droplets

An Euler–Lagrange model is presented that describes the dynamics of liquid droplets emerging from a high-pressure spray nozzle in a relatively large volume (of the order of almost a cubic meter). In the model, the gas phase is treated as continuum, solved on an Eulerian grid, and the liquid phase is treated as a dispersed phase, solved in a Lagrangian fashion, with interphase coupling through state-of-the-art drag relations obtained from direct numerical simulations. The droplets are introduced into the system at high velocities, leading to a turbulent self-induced gas flow which is solved using large eddy simulation. Despite the relatively low liquid volume fraction in the spray, the number density of droplets at the nozzle is still more than 1010 m-3, which is why we employ a highly efficient stochastic Direct Simulation Monte Carlo approach to track collisions between droplets. The droplet collision frequency is calculated on the basis of local droplet number density, droplet size and relative velocities of neighbouring droplets within a dynamically adapting searching scope, as described in Pawar et al. (2014. Chem. Eng. Sci. 105, 132–142). We use known correlations from literature to determine the outcome of a binary droplet collision, which depending on characteristic dimensionless numbers can be coalescence, bouncing or, for high velocity impacts, stretching or reflexive separation leading to formation of satellite droplets. Our simulation model is compared with droplet velocities and size distributions obtained from phase Doppler interferometry experiments on an industrial scale hollow-cone pressure swirl nozzle spray. We find semi-quantitative agreement for spray characteristics such as the axial and radial spray velocity, spray jet width, and the dependence of the droplet size distribution on position within the spray. The simulation model enables us to study the relative importance of different droplet collision events occurring in the spray volume.

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