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Liquid-liquid dispersion by head-on impingement in a cross-slot microfluidic device to form oil-in-water emulsion is experimentally investigated at broad range of flow rate conditions. Reynolds number based on the continuous aqueous phase flow is changed from 1000 to 7000 and the oil dispersed volume fraction varies between 3% and 30%. The flow patterns are observed in the vicinity of impinging region to characterize the effect of Reynolds number and oil volume fraction on the water-oil interaction and thus emulsification process. Based on the measured droplet size and size distribution, two geometries are compared, aimed at evaluating the advantages and disadvantages of swirl flow in the collision region for producing high quality emulsion. One configuration, "600-600", corresponds to inlet channels of identical size (600 μm×600 μm), while the other one, "600-300", has a smaller channel for dispersed phase which is off-axis with the water channel. The results show that flow characteristics during dispersing process are significantly different for viscous and turbulent conditions. Dominated by Reynolds number, the flow patterns are classified into three regimes. The more turbulent the flow is, the finer and more monodispersed droplets will be in the o/w emulsion. In the medium Reynolds number regime, characteristics of flow are closer to laminar flow using higher oil volume fraction, compared to small oil volume content. It is particularly evident with 600-300 system because of lowering velocity gradient between two phase streams. Based on results of drop mean diameter and polydispersity index, 600-300 system which generates swirl flow structure only exhibits a superior performance, compared to the conventional equal-size geometry, at relatively higher Reynolds number.

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Experimental study on drop breakage is carried out in the microchannels utilizing head-on impingement configuration by observing single drop breakup process. In this study, the breakage of oil drops with diameter ranging from 30 to 200 μm is investigated in the vicinity of flows impingement region by using high-speed photography at varied flow rate conditions. The most prominent phenomenon of the single drop breakup in the two streams impinging flow field is that the drop tends to break into multiple fragments. The breakage time and the number of daughter drops in the resulting population are statistically analysed and found to be highly dependent on the mother drop size and energy dissipation rate. Two different micro-system geometries, the 600-600 system and the 600-300 system, are compared to evaluate the advantages and disadvantages of swirl flow developed due to the off-axis layout of inlet channels in the 600-300 system. The results show that swirl flow establishes a low pressure area acting as the dead zone, where drop can be trapped and then drastically stretched to breakup. Compared with the 600-600 system, the detrimental effect of swirl flow inside the 600-300 system on increasing the breakage time can be offset by much greater amount of daughter drops generated. In general, the 600-300 system performs more effectively than the 600-600 system because of the less isotropic flow feature. And this superiority is more distinct when energy dissipation rate is higher. Acronyms Ca Capillary number,-DDSD daughter drop size distribution,-Re Reynolds number,-SSI swirl strength index,-We Weber number,-Wet Weber number in turbulent flow,-We* Weber number defined in this study,

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