Coalescence of an emulsion in a fibrous bed: Part I. Theory

Abstract

A model of a fibrous bed coalescer is presented which relates the collision frequency between particles and fibers to the overall coalescence frequency. The model will predict the ratio of outlet to inlet particle number densities (Y) and takes into account the mean inlet particle size, mean fiber size, void fraction of the bed, superficial velocity through the bed, degree of bed saturation, and bed length. The ratio of outlet to inlet particle number density, in terms of these parameters, is given by \documentclass{article}\pagestyle{empty}\begin{document} \[Y = \exp \left\{{- \frac{{3(1 - \in)S(1 + d_{10} /d_f)}} {{4d_f (1 - S)}}\eta _e L} \right\} \] \end{document} where η is defined as the coalescence efficiency and varies between 0 and 1 with the fiber Reynolds number.

Removal of Oil from Produced Water by Coalescence/Filtration in a Granular Bed

“…Although other mechanisms were identified, it was shown that the order of magnitude of collision frequencies due to impaction was high enough to neglect the other mechanisms [16]. The steady-state equation which presented overall coalescence efficiency was:…”

“…A model was presented to determine overall coalescence efficiency [16,17,18]. Although the equations were developed for fibrous bed coalescers, the authors stated that they can also be applied to granular beds with changes made to account for a different hydraulic radius.…”

Effect of the Mixed Oleophilic Fibrous Coalescer Geometry and the Operating Conditions on Oily Wastewater Separation

“…The increase of the pressure drop with increasing inlet oil content can be ignored. Kintner and Sherony [28,29] developed a collision model that considers two types of collision. In the first type, the droplets move with the continuous phase and collide with other droplets attached onto the fibrous bed, which is referred to as the interception.…”

Filtration application from recycled expanded polystyrene

“…One important factor that controls the performance of a filter medium in the separation is the fiber size. Filter media with large fiber contact areas per unit volume generally perform better than media with lesser surface areas [1][2][3][4][5][6][7][8][9][10][11].…”