Separation of Oil Phase from Dilute Oil/Water Emulsion
 

I want to simulate Separation of Oil Phase from Dilute Oil/Water Emulsion.
I don't know that which of multiphase model of fluent is suitable for my modeling.
water droplets separate from oil by gravity. In this separation the water droplets have interaction with together and small droplets change to larger droplets then new droplet that have more weight, separate from oil with gravity.

Hello Alireza,

That's a rather involved simulation to do in FLUENT. It all depends on the scale of the domain you want to model. If you are looking at large scale equipment there's no way you can model the individual droplets, and you need Eulerian multiphase. Problem is that interaction is not default in there, and you need some kind of population-balance approach in order to simulate droplet merging. But this does mean that merging results from a set empirical model, rather than underlying physics.

Looking at smaller scales, volume of fluid (VOF) may be the way to go but the method is not particularly good at predicting coalescent behavior if I recall correctly. When you are looking at small scales (several droplets) it would be better to look outside of FLUENT, for example into phase-field methods. Those simulations use chemical potential rather than concentration as a driving force, hence phase separation can be captured quite nicely with it. If I'm correct, there are some OpenFOAM modifications that can handle phase-field.

Hello Ceesh
Thanks for your attention and guidance.
Your post is very helpful for me and now I can solve my problem with a new method. I have not any studied about phase-field methods.

Hi alireza,
What method do you used to simulate the droplet particles/emulsion? Are you using Eulerian method or just VOF? Thanks in advanced!