Abstract:
© 2020 The fluid flow and pressure drop of liquid-liquid Taylor flow in a square microchannel are studied, both experimentally, and numerically using a three-dimensional numerical simulation. The experiments were carried out with a square channel having a hydraulic diameter of 2 mm, and the numerical simulations were performed for square channels with hydraulic diameters of 1 and 2 mm. The working fluids were water droplets in a hexadecane or kerosene carrier fluid. The droplet shape, droplet velocity, film thickness and pressure drop of the liquid-liquid Taylor flows were studied over Reynolds number and Capillary number ranges of 6 ≤ Re ≤ 100 and 0.0005 ≤ Ca ≤ 0.02 respectively. It was found that the droplet velocity and the geometry of the front and rear of the droplet are independent of the droplet volume. The droplet velocity was found to be approximately 10% higher than the mixture velocity for 0.0005 < Ca < 0.02. Correlations have been developed to predict the film thickness and pressure drop of liquid-liquid Taylor flow in square microchannels.