Modeling of Flocculation and Coalescence of Oil Droplets in Oily Emulsions

In this paper, a mathematical model which accounts for the kinetics of flocculation and coalescence of emulsion drops was developed to quantify the kinetic of emulsion stability. It includes a term to describe efficiency of collisions. Also, the coalescence rate constant was defined as a function of total number of particle which present in the system at the moment. The model has four adjustable parameters and nonlinear least square optimization is used to obtain the adjustable parameters. The obtained adjustable parameters by the model were served as parameters which can be used to evaluate quantitatively the effectiveness of a set of different demulsifiers by measuring total numbers of drops versus time and by determining the adjustable parameters and comparing them.