Experimental Investigation of Bubble-Droplet Coalescence Phenomenon in Water

Nowadays, the interaction of oil droplets with gas bubbles plays an important role in many industrial, environmental and biological processes. Therefore, in this paper, the outcome of a collision between a silicon oil droplet and an air bubble in water has studied in order to identify the effective parameters in this process. For this purpose, an especial setup was built and four series of experiments in both dynamic (in which the relative velocity of collision is equal to the bubble velocity due to the Buoyancy force) and static conditions were carried out. The results of these experiments were presented and discussed in the form of several tables and pictures. In these experiments, a high-speed camera and image processing were used to gain a better understanding about bubble-drop coalescence qualitatively, and to obtain some quantitative information such as contact time, velocity, and kinetic and interfacial energies of bubbles and drops during the impact. The results of this study show that in addition to the spreading coefficient, the kinetic energy of bubble/droplet in the collision and their contact time, are also determinative parameters in the determination of the outcome of a collision. In the dynamic and static states, the effect of kinetic energy and contact time are more effective, respectively.