Liquid-Liquid Emulsion Produced by 3D-Printed Vortex-Based Hydrodynamic Cavitation Device

Abstract

3D-printed vortex-based devices have shown excellent performance in realizing hydrodynamic cavitation (HC) and have opened up new ways of effectively producing oil-in-water emulsions via cavitation. In this work, the performance of machined and 3D-printed vortex-based HC devices for producing liquid-liquid emulsions was compared in terms of droplet breakage efficiency and energy consumption per kilogram of emulsion. The Euler numbers of 3D-printed and VMC-machined HC devices were 42 and 48, respectively. The differences in droplet size distribution and other characteristic diameters were insignificant after 50 passes. The present work confirms the potential of harnessing 3D printing technology for fabricating HC devices and can facilitate development of new device designs to improve overall emulsification performance.