5 research outputs found
Experimental and computational studies of water drops falling through model oil with surfactant and subjected to an electric field
The behaviour of a single sub-millimetre-size water drop falling through a
viscous oil while subjected to an electric field is of fundamental importance
to industrial applications such as crude oil electrocoalescers. Detailed
studies, both experimental and computational, have been performed previously,
but an often challenging issue has been the characterization of the fluids. As
numerous authors have noted, it is very difficult to have a perfectly clean
water-oil system even for very pure model oils, and the presence of trace
chemicals may significantly alter the interface behaviour. In this work, we
consider a well- characterized water-oil system where controlled amounts of a
surface active agent (Span 80) have been added to the oil. This addition
dominates any trace contaminants in the oil, such that the interface behaviour
can also be well-characterized. We present the results of experiments and
corresponding two-phase- flow simulations of a falling water drop covered in
surfactant and subjected to a monopolar square voltage pulse. The results are
compared and good agreement is found for surfactant concentrations below the
critical micelle concentration.Comment: 7 pages, 9 figures, to be presented at the ICDL 2014 conferenc
Influence of surfactants on the electrohydrodynamic stretching of water drops in oil
In this paper we present experimental and numerical studies of the
electrohydrodynamic stretching of a sub-millimetre-sized salt water drop,
immersed in oil with added non-ionic surfactant, and subjected to a suddenly
applied electric field of magnitude approaching 1 kV/mm. By varying the drop
size, electric field strength and surfactant concentration we cover the whole
range of electric capillary numbers () from 0 up to the limit of drop
disintegration. The results are compared with the analytical result by Taylor
(1964) which predicts the asymptotic deformation as a function of . We
find that the addition of surfactant damps the transient oscillations and that
the drops may be stretched slightly beyond the stability limit found by Taylor.
We proceed to study the damping of the oscillations, and show that increasing
the surfactant concentration has a dual effect of first increasing the damping
at low concentrations, and then increasing the asymptotic deformation at higher
concentrations. We explain this by comparing the Marangoni forces and the
interfacial tension as the drops deform. Finally, we have observed in the
experiments a significant hysteresis effect when drops in oil with large
concentration of surfactant are subjected to repeated deformations with
increasing electric field strengths. This effect is not attributable to the
flow nor the interfacial surfactant transport
The ALICE TPC, a large 3-dimensional tracking device with fast readout for ultra-high multiplicity events
The design, construction, and commissioning of the ALICE Time-Projection Chamber (TPC) is described. It is the main device for pattern recognition, tracking, and identification of charged particles in the ALICE experiment at the CERN LHC. The TPC is cylindrical in shape with a volume close to 90 m3 and is operated in a 0.5 T solenoidal magnetic field parallel to its axis. In this paper we describe in detail the design considerations for this detector for operation in the extreme multiplicity environment of central Pb–Pb collisions at LHC energy. The implementation of the resulting requirements into hardware (field cage, read-out chambers, electronics), infrastructure (gas and cooling system, laser-calibration system), and software led to many technical innovations which are described along with a presentation of all the major components of the detector, as currently realized. We also report on the performance achieved after completion of the first round of stand-alone calibration runs and demonstrate results close to those specified in the TPC Technical Design Report.publishedVersio