Experimental Study on a Rising Oil Droplet through a Water-Oil Interface

Todays, the discussion of the droplets interaction with fluid is one of the most challenging topics in multi-phase (liquid-liquid) flow. In the present work, an experimental study was done to investigate the oil droplet rising through a stagnant fluid water and crossing the water-oil interface. Thus, an image recording and processing have been used. The employed oil in the experiments is a heavy crude oil extracted from an Iranian oil reservoir and the drop diameter is controlled in the range of 2 to 3mm. Firstly, the range of the obtained dimensionless numbers was compared and validated with the experimental data of the other works. The results showed that in the applied conditions, the drop shape is ellipse-like and the Weber number decreased by increasing aspect ratio. Moreover, residence time versus drop diameter did not follow a uniform procedure. Finally, the best correlation was introduced to predict the residence time of oil droplets by comparing the experimental results with the presented empirical equations