Controlled Production of Emulsions Using a Crossflow Membrane

A method for manufacturing emulsions — crossflow membrane emulsification has been studied. This involves the formation of emulsions by breaking up the discontinuous phase into droplets in a controlled manner without the use of turbulent eddies. This is achieved by passing the discontinuous phase through a suitable microporous medium and injecting the droplets so formed directly into a moving continuous phase. This paper presents two examples of experimental data for droplet formation using a single pore (capillary tube) and a membrane tube. A high-speed video camera (up to 1000 frames per second) was used to record the formation of droplet from a single pore and thus measure droplet growth and the detachment processes as a function of process parameters such as transmembrane pressure drop, membrane pore size, continuous phase crossflow velocity etc. Real emulsions were prepared using a membrane tube.