Experimental Investigation of Phase Inversion of Liquid-Liquid Systems in a Spray Extraction Column

An experimental study of the phase inversion behavior of liquid-liquid dispersion hasbeen conducted in a spray extraction column for systems of toluene / water, n-hexane/water,ccl4/water, toluene /water + glycerol (25 % wt), toluene + ccl4 (25 % wt) / water and toluene /acetic acid (5 % wt)/water. the effects of physical properties, mass transfer and column geometryon phase inversion have been investigated. the results show that the dispersed phase hold upsufficient for phase inversion increases in o/w dispersion and decreases in w/o dispersion byincreasing interfacial tension. also, it was found that by increasing the viscosity of aqueous phase,dispersed phase hold up decreases at phase inversion point in both o/w and w/o dispersions. thetendency to phase inversion increases in o/w dispersion with an increase in density difference of twophases. it was observed that dispersed phase hold up at phase inversion point decreases in thepresence of mass transfer, when the direction of mass transfer is from dispersed phase tocontinuous phase. the results show that dispersed phase holdup increases with drop size at phaseinversion point and column diameter has an important effect on phase inversion because of walleffect.