Modares Mechanical Engineering

Modares Mechanical Engineering

Numerical Study of the Formation of Compound Droplets in a Three-Phase Glass Capillary Microfluidic System

Document Type : Original Research

Authors
saeed pourahmadian
Mohamad Ali Bijarchi
Sharif University of Technology
10.48311/mme.24.7.433
Abstract
The compound droplets resulting from water-in-oil-in-water emulsions have many applications, including in the food, pharmaceutical and cosmetic industries. Investigating the effective parameters in the production of these droplets plays an important role in their controlled production. In this numerical study, the production of compound droplets in a three-phase axisymmetric glass capillary microfluidic device is investigated. The structure of this system consists of two co-flow and one flow-focusing devices. In this study, the volume of fluid (VOF) method is used to solve the governing equations in different phases. 5 dimensionless parameters are selected to check the effect of each component on the diameter, the generation frequency, and the breakup length of the compound droplets. This study has successfully predicted the formation of compound droplets in the droplet regime. The simulation results show that with increasing the ratio of inner nozzle diameter to outer tube diameter, the core diameter enhances and the shell thickness decreases. By decreasing the angle of the inner nozzle tip, the drop regime changes to the jet regime. By increasing the contact angle of the middle phase with respect to the outer phase in the outer tube wall from 90 to 120 degrees, the frequency of droplet generation increases by 22%. The results of this study can be used for applications such as 3D cell culture.
Keywords
Compound droplet
Double emulsion
droplet microfluidics
capillary tube
Numerical solution

Subjects

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Modares Mechanical Engineering
Volume 24, Issue 7
June 2024
Pages 433-441