Periodic emission of droplets from an oscillating electrified meniscus of a low-viscosity, highly conductive liquid

Hijano, A. J. and Loscertales, I. G. and Ibañez Leon, Santiago Enrique and Higuera Antón, Francisco (2015). Periodic emission of droplets from an oscillating electrified meniscus of a low-viscosity, highly conductive liquid. "Physical Review E", v. 91 (n. 1); pp.. ISSN 1539-3755. https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevE.91.013011.

Description

Title: Periodic emission of droplets from an oscillating electrified meniscus of a low-viscosity, highly conductive liquid
Author/s:
  • Hijano, A. J.
  • Loscertales, I. G.
  • Ibañez Leon, Santiago Enrique
  • Higuera Antón, Francisco
Item Type: Article
Título de Revista/Publicación: Physical Review E
Date: 20 January 2015
ISSN: 1539-3755
Volume: 91
Subjects:
Faculty: E.T.S. de Ingeniería Aeronáutica y del Espacio (UPM)
Department: Mecánica de Fluidos y Propulsión Aeroespacial
Creative Commons Licenses: Recognition - No derivative works - Non commercial

Full text

[thumbnail of INVE_MEM_2015_187296.pdf]
Preview
PDF - Requires a PDF viewer, such as GSview, Xpdf or Adobe Acrobat Reader
Download (912kB) | Preview

Abstract

The generation of identical droplets of controllable size in the micrometer range is a problem of much interest owing to the numerous technological applications of such droplets. This work reports an investigation of the regime of periodic emission of droplets from an electrified oscillating meniscus of a liquid of low viscosity and high electrical conductivity attached to the end of a capillary tube, which may be used to produce droplets more than ten times smaller than the diameter of the tube. To attain this periodic microdripping regime, termed axial spray mode II by Juraschek and Röllgen [R. Juraschek and F. W. Röllgen, Int. J. Mass Spectrom. 177, 1 (1998)], liquid is continuously supplied through the tube at a given constant flow rate, while a dc voltage is applied between the tube and a nearby counter electrode. The resulting electric field induces a stress at the surface of the liquid that stretches the meniscus until, in certain ranges of voltage and flow rate, it develops a ligament that eventually detaches, forming a single droplet, in a process that repeats itself periodically. While it is being stretched, the ligament develops a conical tip that emits ultrafine droplets, but the total mass emitted is practically contained in the main droplet. In the parametrical domain studied, we find that the process depends on two main dimensionless parameters, the flow rate nondimensionalized with the diameter of the tube and the capillary time, q, and the electric Bond number BE, which is a nondimensional measure of the square of the applied voltage. The meniscus oscillation frequency made nondimensional with the capillary time, f, is of order unity for very small flow rates and tends to decrease as the inverse of the square root of q for larger values of this parameter. The product of the meniscus mean volume times the oscillation frequency is nearly constant. The characteristic length and width of the liquid ligament immediately before its detachment approximately scale as powers of the flow rate and depend only weakly on the applied voltage. The diameter of the main droplets nondimensionalized with the diameter of the tube satisfies dd≈(6/π)1/3(q/f)1/3, from mass conservation, while the electric charge of these droplets is about 1/4 of the Rayleigh charge. At the minimum flow rate compatible with the periodic regimen, the dimensionless diameter of the droplets is smaller than one-tenth, which presents a way to use electrohydrodynamic atomization to generate droplets of highly conducting liquids in the micron-size range, in marked contrast with the cone-jet electrospray whose typical droplet size is in the nanometric regime for these liquids. In contrast with other microdripping regimes where the mass is emitted upon the periodic formation of a narrow capillary jet, the present regime gives one single droplet per oscillation, except for the almost massless fine aerosol emitted in the form of an electrospray.

Funding Projects

Type
Code
Acronym
Leader
Title
Government of Spain
DPI2010- 20450-C03
Unspecified
Miguel Pérez-Saborid Sánchez-Pastor
Aspectos Fundamentales de la Operación de Electrosprays. Aplicaciones a la Producción de Nanopartículas y Nanoemulsiones.
Government of Spain
DPI2013-47372-C02
Unspecified
Unspecified
Dispositivos microfluidicos basados en electrospray. Aspectos fundamentales y aplicación a la síntesis de emulsiones y micropartículas
Government of Spain
CSD2010- 00010
Unspecified
Unspecified
Ignition and extinction analyses of spray diffusion flames

More information

Item ID: 40117
DC Identifier: https://oa.upm.es/40117/
OAI Identifier: oai:oa.upm.es:40117
DOI: 10.1103/PhysRevE.91.013011
Official URL: http://journals.aps.org/pre/abstract/10.1103/PhysR...
Deposited by: Memoria Investigacion
Deposited on: 05 Oct 2016 10:58
Last Modified: 01 Aug 2018 10:18
  • Logo InvestigaM (UPM)
  • Logo GEOUP4
  • Logo Open Access
  • Open Access
  • Logo Sherpa/Romeo
    Check whether the anglo-saxon journal in which you have published an article allows you to also publish it under open access.
  • Logo Dulcinea
    Check whether the spanish journal in which you have published an article allows you to also publish it under open access.
  • Logo de Recolecta
  • Logo del Observatorio I+D+i UPM
  • Logo de OpenCourseWare UPM