Chemical and Process Engineering

Abstract

The electrostatic impulse method is an established method for producing microbeads or capsules. Such particles have found application in biomedical engineering and biotechnology. The geometric properties of the droplets -constituting precursors of microbeads and capsules -can be precisely controlled by adjusting the geometry of the nozzle system, the physical properties and the flow rate of the fluids involved, as well as the parameters of the electrostatic impulse. In this work, a method of mathematical modeling of the droplet generation process using the electrostatic impulse method in a single nozzle system is presented. The developed mathematical model is an extension of the standard Volume of Fluid (VOF) model by addition of the effect of the electric field on the fluid flow. The model was implemented into the OpenFOAM toolkit for computational fluid dynamics (CFD). The performed CFD simulation results showed good agreement with experimental data. As a result, the influence of all process parameters on the droplet generation process was studied. The most significant change in droplet generation was caused by changing the electrostatic impulse strength. The presented modeling method can be used for optimization of process design and for studying the mechanisms of droplet generation. It can be extended to describe multi nozzle systems used for one-step microcapsule production.