Studies of drop break‐up in liquid‐liquid systems in a rotating disc contactor. Part I: Conditions of no mass transfer

Abstract Observations on the break‐up of single drops in a rotating disc contactor show that there is a critical rotor speed below which drops of a given size do not break. Weber and Reynolds numbers are required to correlate the data and not simply a Weber number as for turbine agitated systems. The probability of break‐up of a drop at the rotor edge is expressed in terms of a Weber number with a lower limit for critical conditions. The mean number of daughter drops produced on break‐up is correlated as a simple function of drop diameter based on the critical diameter and agreement is found with data from other types of agitated equipment.