Chemical Engineering Science 59 (2004) 3183 3193

www.elsevier.com/locate/ces

Acoustically aided separation of oil droplets from aqueous emulsions

Gautam D. Pangu, Donald L. Feke
Department of Chemical Engineering, Case Western Reserve University, Cleveland, OH 44106, USA
Received 4 April 2003; received in revised form 15 January 2004; accepted 31 March 2004

Abstract
A novel method for recovering the oil phase from aqueous emulsions has been developed. The method applies a low-intensity, resonant
ultrasonic 5eld within a rectangular chamber, which is optionally 5lled with a highly porous medium. Oil droplets dispersed in water
have negative acoustic contrast factor and thus are driven to the pressure antinodes of the standing wave 5eld under the in7uence of
acoustic radiation forces. Subsequent coalescence and/or wetting onto the internal surfaces of the chamber occur. Three types of porous
media (an unconsolidated bed of 3-mm glass beads, aluminum mesh or reticulated polyester mesh) having pore sizes two to three orders
of magnitude larger than droplets being collected were used. The oil collection was found to be sensitive to the natural a9nity between
the oil and the porous medium as well as its porosity. Of the three media studied, the polyester mesh was found to be the best in terms
of the percentage oil collection while the bed of glass beads performed the poorest. The oil collection was found to be highly sensitive to
the residence time of the emulsion in both the porous medium and acoustic 5eld. Oil collection also showed expected trends with applied
electrical power, but it was not found to be strongly dependent on the internal surface area of the mesh for the range of feed concentration
tested. These experiments enable a preliminary understanding about the mechanisms underlying the separation process.
? 2004 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
Keywords: Emulsion; Droplet; Acoustic 5eld; Porous medium; Separation; Coalescence

1. Introduction
Many chemical, material and biological process applications involve multiphase systems where a 7uid phase is
in contact with a particulate or immiscible liquid phase.
There can be several instances where the separation of the
dispersed phase from its suspending 7uid is of interest in
industrial processes. Conventional separation techniques
for solid suspensions involve physical screening techniques
(membranes or beds of 5ltration media, mechanical sieves),
gravity-driven methods that utilize a density di;erence for
separation, or methods that involve external 5elds (e.g. centrifugal or magnetic) to increase the rate and sharpness of
separation. The method used to recover a dispersed phase
from a liquid emulsion depends on the type of the emulsion
(e.g. oil-in-water or water-in-oil) and other factors such as
the viscosity, density di;erential and relative proportion of
the two phases as well as the age of the emulsion (Lissant,
1983; Schramm, 1992). Chemical methods involve the use
of additives that enhance the phase separation by altering
Corresponding author. Tel.: +1-216-368-2750;
fax: +1-216-368-3016.
E-mail address: dlf4@case.edu (D.L. Feke).

0009-2509/$ - see front matter ? 2004 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
doi:10.1016/j.ces.2004.03.038

the molecular-scale interactions within the system. While

these methods are usually fast, they have the disadvantages
of cost and the complexity of having to remove the additive
in subsequent processing steps. Physical methods include
traditional gravity settlers, which may require large residence times or large physical spaces. Other physical methods involve the application of external 5elds (e.g. centrifugal
or electric (Jang and Lee, 2000; Kim et al., 2002)), which
enhance phase-separation by assisting migration, collisions
and subsequent coalescence of dispersed phase droplets,
or the use of porous membranes to break the emulsion
(Cheryan and Rajagopalan, 1998). A combination of the
above-mentioned methods has also been reported in the literature (Edmondson, 1998; Eow and Ghadiri, 2002). However, di9culties involved in scale-up of these processes and
maintaining high e9ciencies on a large scale over longer
periods of time may pose problems in using these processes
for practical applications.
During the past few decades, the ability of low intensity
ultrasonic standing wave-5elds to manipulate small particles in liquid suspension has been used to as the basis of
various fractionation and 5ltration methods. The suspended
particles respond to the resonant acoustic 5eld if there is

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G.D. Pangu, D.L. Feke / Chemical Engineering Science 59 (2004) 3183 3193

a non-zero acoustic contrast between the dispersed phase

and the suspending 7uid. In several of these methods, a
one-dimensional sound 5eld is used to organize the particles into thin parallel bands separated by a one-half acoustic
wavelength spacing. The particles are separated from their
suspending 7uid by either placing closely spaced physical
barriers between the bands of particles and transporting the
acoustically produced particle-free and particle-rich streams
into separate exit streams (Mandralis and Feke, 1993a,b;
Gupta et al., 1995), or transporting particles in the opposite direction of the 7owing 7uid by using slowly moving
pseudo-standing waves (Tolt and Feke, 1992; Benes et al.,
1991). Other approaches involve the use of acoustic methods
to induce agglomeration of particles which can then be recovered by conventional physical screening or gravity driven
methods (Frank et al., 1993; Allman and Coakley, 1994).
Certain separation techniques are a blend of acoustic and
physical screening methods in which a resonant acoustic
5eld is applied to a porous medium through which a particulate suspension 7ows. The interaction of the acoustic
5eld with the porous medium improves its performance
as a 5lter and collection of particles up to two orders of
magnitude smaller than the pore size can be achieved. The
trapped particles are recovered by deactivating the acoustic
5eld and 7ushing the porous medium with processing 7uid
(Gupta and Feke, 1997).
In the work cited above, the ability of ultrasonic standing wave 5elds to manipulate solid particles in liquid suspensions was studied and described. Here we report on the
development of the 5rst ultrasonically aided process that intends to recover the oil phase from aqueous emulsions (having droplet size ranging from 1 to 15 m). This is in direct
contrast to the more common use of ultrasonic 5elds and
sonication processes to produce or stabilize emulsions. In
our method, the ultrasonic 5eld causes oil droplets to coalesce and/or to be transported to the internal surfaces of the
chamber where the oil phase accumulates, and clari5ed water 7ows out from the chamber.
The principal aim of the work described here was to
demonstrate proof-of-concept for our separation method and
to investigate the feasibility and practicality of the process
by obtaining some relevant separation performance data.
Another goal of our study was to determine whether the material of construction of the porous media would a;ect the
separation performance in a manner based on the interfacial
a9nity between the porous media and the oil droplets. These
results provide insights into the fundamental mechanism of
the separation process.
2. Concept
The susceptibility of a suspended particle to respond to
a resonant ultrasonic 5eld depends on the acoustic contrast factor, F, relative to the suspending 7uid (Yosioka and
Kawasima, 1955). The acoustic contrast F for the particle,

under the conditions of particle size R
acoustic wavelength , is given by

F=

 + 2( 1)=3
1

;
1 + 2
32 

(1)

where  is the ratio of particle density to the 7uid density

and  is the ratio of longitudinal sound speed in a particle
to that in the 7uid. Due to the acoustic contrast, the particle
experiences a time-averaged force known as the primary
acoustic force, F1; ac that is given for a one-dimensional 5eld
as
F1; ac = 4R3 Eac F sin(2 x)

(2)

where R is the particle radius, is the wave number of the

acoustic 5eld, Eac is the energy density of the acoustic 5eld,
F is the acoustic contrast factor and x is the distance from
a pressure antinode of the standing wave. This force acts
in the direction parallel to the direction the acoustic 5eld
propagates. A simple stability analysis of Eq. (2) indicates
that the sound 5eld will drive the particles into a pressure
node if F 0 or to a pressure antinode if F 0. Hence
the particles subjected to a resonant standing acoustic 5eld
will be pushed towards these stable equilibrium points and
become concentrated into regions located at pressure nodes
or antinodes, depending on the sign of F.
Suspended particles subjected to a one-dimensional resonant 5eld may also scatter that sound 5eld. The interaction
of particles with the scattered 5eld from a neighboring particle gives rise to secondary acoustic forces (Weiser et al.,
1984). The secondary acoustic force, F2; ac is attractive when
both particles are either more or less compressible than the
7uid and repulsive in any other case. The secondary acoustic force between two particles (indices 1 and 2) is given as





p1
p2 Vp2 Vp1
2 Eac
1
1
F2; ac =
(3)
2
f
f
d2
where f the compressibility of the 7uid, p the compressibility of the particle, Vp is the particle volume, and d is the
center-to-center distance between the interacting particles.
Usually the secondary acoustic force is at least an order of
magnitude smaller than the primary acoustic force immediately after the sound 5eld is applied. But as the particles
are gathered at nodes (or antinodes) due to primary acoustic force, agglomeration is induced between the particles
and the particle concentration inside the separation equipment increases. As particle-agglomerates grow larger and
interparticle distances decrease due to particle build-up, the
secondary acoustic force can become signi5cantly large in
magnitude inducing further agglomeration between the particles or agglomerates.
As described in the Introduction, acoustic forces have
been previously used to manipulate micron-sized solid particles suspended in a liquid. Also, resonant ultrasonic 5elds
propagated through a highly porous medium have been
used to entrap very small (relative to the pore size) solid

G.D. Pangu, D.L. Feke / Chemical Engineering Science 59 (2004) 3183 3193

particles within the porous medium. High collection e9ciencies for solid particles of 7080% have been achieved with
the use of aluminum and polyester mesh (Gupta and Feke,
1998). Various possible mechanisms of the particle trapping
phenomena within the porous medium have been proposed
(Gupta and Feke, 1997; Grossner et al., 2003). The use of
porous medium inside the chamber can in7uence the process in di;erent ways. For example, the acoustic 5eld inside
the chamber could undergo internal re7ections and scattering due to the presence of the porous medium, producing a
complex three-dimensional 5eld.
For the vegetable-oil emulsions used for this work, F =
0:10. Thus, when an aqueous emulsion of vegetable oil is
subjected to a standing ultrasonic wave 5eld, the primary
acoustic force is expected to drive the oil drops towards the
pressure antinodes of the standing wave 5eld. The oil drops
are expected to coalesce due to secondary acoustic forces.
Furthermore, the coalesced drops are expected to be retained
in the void spaces of the porous medium or collected on the
internal surfaces of the porous medium depending upon their
wetting properties, giving rise to signi5cant oil retention
inside the porous medium.
3. Experimental methods
The experiments were carried out in a rectangular acoustic chamber, the schematic of which is shown in Fig. 1. The

3185

chamber consisted of a rectangular PZT transducer (Navy

type I, Model EC-64, 77:5 46:0 10:03 mm, EDO Electro
Ceramics Corporation, Salt Lake City, Utah) and a stainless steel re7ector (82:0 48:1 1:5 mm) supported on
two polyethylene support structures, one each for transducer
and re7ector. The transducer and re7ector were recessed
into the acrylic centerpiece. When the chamber was assembled, a watertight seal was created between the transducer,
the re7ector and their support structures by thin latex membranes (0:4 mm thick) that were glued around the edges of
the transducer and re7ector. The spacing between the transducer and re7ector was adjusted to be 12:2 mm for all experiments. According to the mathematical model developed
to predict resonant frequencies and energy densities in different layers (transducer, re7ector and the 7uid layer) of a
parallel-plate con5guration (shown in Fig. 1) of the acoustic chamber as a function of chamber dimensions and material properties (Rusinko, 2001), the spacing of 12:2 mm was
found to give high acoustic energy density in the 7uid layer
as compared to the other layers for this experimental con5guration. The chamber was equipped with ports at the top
and bottom for the emulsion feed and eOuent removal. The
ultrasonic 5eld was produced by energizing the transducer
at 680 kHz frequency using a continuous sinusoidal signal
generated by a KROHN-HITE 2100 A signal generator and
ampli5ed by an ENI 240 L power ampli5er. The voltage,
current, power and power factor of the signal was recorded
by a Clarke-Hess 2330 sampling V-A-W meter. To ensure

Fig. 1. Schematic of the acoustic chamber.

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G.D. Pangu, D.L. Feke / Chemical Engineering Science 59 (2004) 3183 3193

that the chamber stayed at a resonance condition and with

a high fraction of the power delivered to the emulsion, a
home-built automatic electronic controller was used. The
quality of resonance was characterized in terms of the power
factor, which is de5ned as the cosine of the phase di;erence
between the voltage applied to the chamber and the resulting
electrical current. The electronic controller senses the power
factor and accordingly corrects the operating frequency in
order to keep the power factor close to one.
Video imaging of the acoustic chamber was accomplished
using a CCD video camera mounted on a micrometer adjustable xyz positioning platform. The video images were
viewed on a digital monitor and recorded digitally on a PC
using Sphinx Pro Video Capture Software.
The oil/water emulsions used as feed for the experiments
were prepared from vegetable oil (commercially obtained
pure Wesson Soybean oil) and deionized water. The oil and
water were mixed such that the volume percentage of oil in
the mixture was 0.50. The mixture was stirred vigorously
for about 1 min and then it was ultrasonicated (using a MISONIX XL 2020 20 kHz Sonicator) for the period of 7
8 min. This procedure typically produced an emulsion with
droplet sizes ranging from 1 to 10 m. Prior to performing
the experiments, these emulsions were diluted with deionized water in a ratio of 1:10. The dilution was required to
enable the visual observation of the response of oil droplets
to ultrasound and also to accommodate the analytical technique that was used to determine the droplet size distribution and oil concentration in the feed and the eOuent stream.
A peristaltic pump was used to deliver the emulsion to the
acoustic chamber.
The emulsions were characterized in terms of droplet
size distribution and oil concentration using a SPECTREX
ILI-1000 Laser Particle Counter. The counter can be used to
determine the number of particles/droplets in 1 cm3 of sample (henceforth referred to as droplet count) as a function of
di;erent size ranges. By maintaining su9cient accuracy in
preparing and diluting the emulsions, this information can
be used to determine the droplet size distribution and oil
concentration (volume fraction of oil) in the feed and ef7uent emulsions. For example, if di is the droplet diameter
and ni is the number concentration of droplets that have diameter di (measured by the droplet counter), then the total
volume concentration of the oil would be


1
Coil =
(4)
ni
d3i ;
6
i
where Coil would be expressed in (volume of oil/volume of
sample).
If the feed and the eOuent are sampled in similar fashion, the corresponding oil concentration in the feed and
feed
eOuent
the eOuent would be Coil
and Coil
. Then the instantaneous percentage oil collection inside the chamber could be
calculated as



eOuent
Coil
100
(5)
inst = 1
feed
Coil

Before starting an experiment, a small sample of feed was

analyzed using the particle counter. A steady 7ow of emulsion through the chamber was 5rst established and then the
acoustic 5eld was activated. After 20 min, a small instantaneous sample of eOuent was collected and immediately
analyzed using the counter.
4. Results and discussion
4.1. Experiments with no internal porous media
As a control, experiments in which no porous mesh was
present in the chamber were performed. Emulsions were fed
at the 7ow-rate of 35 cm3 =min from the bottom to the top
of the chamber. When the acoustic 5eld was activated, the
oil droplets were found to respond almost instantaneously.
Even with no porous medium inserted inside the chamber,
the acoustic 5eld was found to entrap the small oil droplets
inside the chamber and once they were retained, they showed
strong tendency to coalesce. Photographs of the vertical
cross-section of the chamber before and after the activation
of the acoustic 5eld are shown in Fig. 2. Very soon after the
acoustic 5eld was turned on; comparatively larger droplets
became visible inside the chamber. These coalesced droplets
were also found to show a strong tendency of migrating towards the internal surfaces as well as towards the transducer
and re7ector of the chamber. Some of the coalesced droplets,
being lighter than water, became entrained with the eOuent.
It was also observed that even after the acoustic 5eld was
terminated, the droplets within the interior of the chamber
7owed out but the larger droplets remained on the chamber
walls.
A typical droplet size distribution of the feed and the
eOuent emulsion is shown in Fig. 3. The eOuent emulsions
are seen to have a higher percentage of the larger droplets
than the feed, which indicates the coalescence of the droplets
due to acoustic 5eld. Since the 7ow through the chamber
(upwards) was in the same direction that buoyancy acts on
the oil droplets, coalesced droplets might have escaped in
the eOuent. Based on this droplet size distribution and the
droplet count shown by the counter, the volume fraction of
oil in the eOuent (calculated using Eqs. (4) and (5)) was
found to decrease approximately by 30% as compared to
that in the feed in these trials.
The emulsions used as feed in these experiments were prepared without the addition of any emulsifying agent. Hence
the natural coalescence of oil drops is expected to occur over
the period of time. The observation that the eOuent contains
a higher percentage of larger droplets than the feed could
be the result of natural coalescence. To study this, an emulsion similar in characteristics with the emulsions used in the
experiments with the acoustic chamber was prepared. The
emulsion was left undisturbed in a beaker and the droplet
size distribution was determined again after 20 min. The
two distributions are shown in Fig. 4. A shift in the distri-

G.D. Pangu, D.L. Feke / Chemical Engineering Science 59 (2004) 3183 3193

3187

Fig. 2. Photographs of the vertical cross-section of the chamber for the experiments with no porous medium: (a) before activation of the acoustic 5eld;
and (b) one minute after the acoustic 5eld is activated. The droplet coalescence and retention inside the chamber can be seen.

Fig. 3. Droplet size distributions for feed and eOuent for the experiments with no porous medium inside the chamber. The corresponding oil retention
is 30%.

bution is indeed observed, but only to a very small extent.

This result can be attributed to the small density di;erence
between the dispersed and continuous phases (0:1 g=cm3 )
and that the emulsions under consideration are su9ciently
dilute (volume percentage of oil is less that 0.1). Thus we
conclude that natural coalescence is not very prominent for
these emulsions and is not a signi5cant contributor to the difference in the droplet size distributions observed in acoustic
5eld experiments.
In the experiments with no porous medium inside the
chamber, migration and collection of oil drops on the inte-

rior surfaces of the chamber were observed. Some experiments were performed in which a thin polyethylene sheet
was used to cover the re7ector of the chamber. Oil drops
showed a strong tendency to migrate towards the re7ector
during these experiments and careful observations showed
the existence of thin oily layer on the plastic sheet at the
end of the experiment. Hence it was thought that the oil collection would improve if more hydrophobic area inside the
acoustic chamber is provided. Subsequently, a series of experiments to explore the e;ect of providing more area inside
the chamber for oil collection was performed. In addition to

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G.D. Pangu, D.L. Feke / Chemical Engineering Science 59 (2004) 3183 3193

Fig. 4. Droplet size distribution for the emulsion immediately after it was prepared and 20 min after it was prepared. In between the two measurements,
the emulsion was left undisturbed in a beaker.

studying the role of wetting in oil recovery by using di;erent types of porous media inside the chamber, these experiments were also aimed at quantifying the e;ect of processing variables on separation performance.
4.2. Experiments with porous media
Three di;erent types of porous media were used in the
experiments to study the role of the properties of porous
medium on oil collection e9ciency:
(1) 3 mm diameter glass beads (Fisher Scienti5c, Pittsburgh, PA)
(2) Aluminum mesh (ERG Materials & Aerospace Corp.,
Oakland, CA)
(3) Polyester mesh (Polyester-polyurethane reticulated
mesh) (Meshex International, Inc., Linwood, PA
19061).
In the experiments with glass beads, the beads were simply
poured into the open volume between the transducer and
re7ector. This resulted into a randomly packed bed having
porosity 0:4. For the aluminum mesh and polyester mesh,
the porosity was greater than 0.9. For all experiments with
di;erent porous media, the dimensions of the porous region
were 75 mm long, 45 mm wide and 12 mm thick in the
direction of propagation of acoustic 5eld. The feed 7ow rate
was kept at 35 cm3 =min and the feed was passed from top
to bottom of the acoustic chamber. The applied power was
25:8 W (Table 1).
Fig. 5 shows a typical result for an experiment with
polyester mesh. The result is reported in terms of droplet
size distribution of feed (analyzed before the start of the ex-

Table 1
Values of important parameters for the experiments with no porous media
Parameter

Value

Spacing between transducer and re7ector

Frequency
Flow rate
Power to the transducer
Linear 7ow speed

12:2 mm
680 kHz
35 cm3 =min
25:8 W
1:08 mm=s

periment) and the eOuent (a small sample obtained 20 min

after the activation of the acoustic 5eld). Qualitatively, the
droplet size distributions were found to be similar for the
experiments with all three porous media. In all three cases,
the eOuent has a higher percentage of smaller droplets
and a lower percentage of larger droplets than the feed. It
should be noted that this trend is opposite to the one that is
observed for the experiments with no internal porous media
and with the feed 7owing upwards (shown in Fig. 3). Based
on the droplet size distribution and droplet count of the feed
and eOuent, the instantaneous percentage oil collection inside the chamber was found to be 31% for the experiments
using glass beads, 50% when 20-ppi aluminum mesh was
used and 75% for the case of 20-ppi polyester mesh. To
con5rm these trends, experiments were also performed at
applied power of 47.2 W keeping all other operating conditions the same. Qualitatively, similar trends were observed
in the droplet size distributions and the percentage oil collection values were found to be 52%, 55% and 80% for
glass beads, 20-ppi aluminum mesh and 20-ppi polyester
mesh respectively. These results are summarized in Table 2.

G.D. Pangu, D.L. Feke / Chemical Engineering Science 59 (2004) 3183 3193

3189

Fig. 5. Droplet size distributions for feed and eOuent for the experiment with the 20-ppi polyester mesh inside the chamber. The corresponding oil
retention is 75%.
Table 2
Results for the experiments with three porous media
Porous medium

No. of experiments, n

Collection e9ciency
(Power = 25:8 W)

Collection e9ciency
(Power = 47:2 W)

3 mm glass beads
20-ppi aluminum mesh
20-ppi polyester mesh

3
3
3

31 5:56%
50 3:61%
75 4:00%

52 7:55%
55 2%
80 4:00%

The contrast in the droplet size distribution of the feed

and eOuent may be explained as follows. The oil droplets
that are being retained inside the chamber due to the acoustic
force coalesce. Due to the presence of the porous medium
inside the chamber, the large drops thus formed plus the large
droplets that are already present in the feed have a larger
available surface area on which spreading can occur. The
oil retention is further assisted by gravity because the 7ow
of emulsion within the chamber is in the opposite direction
to that of buoyancy. Thus, the larger the drop is, the higher
is the probability of its being retained inside the chamber.
Hence the eOuent is seen to contain a higher percentage of
smaller drops as compared to the feed. However the actual
droplet count for the eOuent is much less than for the feed,
which indicates signi5cant oil retention inside the chamber.
The di;erence in the oil collection performance of three
porous media in presence of acoustic force can be explained
based on the acoustic as well as wetting properties of three
media. Of all the three porous media used for experimentation, polyester has the acoustic impedance closest to that
of water (Table 3). Glass and aluminum have the acous-

Table 3
Important acoustic properties of the materials used in this work
Material

Density, 
Bulk sound speed, c Acoustic impedance
Z = c(106 kg=m2 s)
(103 kg=m3 ) (103 m=s)

Water
Vegetable oil
Aluminum
Glass
Polyester

1.0
0.9
2.7
3.6
1.2

1.48
1.43
6.27
4.26
2.43

1.48
1.29
17.0
15.4
3.0

tic impedances that are vastly di;erent from that of water.

So it can be expected that the acoustic 5eld will have minimal internal re7ections and scattering inside the polyester
mesh. Thus the probability of the existence of a stronger
acoustic 5eld throughout the whole interior of the chamber
is greater in the case of the polyester mesh. This might have
resulted in better performance of polyester mesh in terms of
oil collection. Vegetable oils mainly contain triglycerides,
which are tri-esters of glycerols and fatty acids. The wetting

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G.D. Pangu, D.L. Feke / Chemical Engineering Science 59 (2004) 3183 3193

properties of triglycerides on solid surfaces of di;erent hydrophobicities have been studied by others (Michalski and
Saramago, 2000). In general, it is found that the wetting behavior improves with increasing hydrophobicity of the solid.
Speci5cally it has been found that triglycerides exhibit lower
values of contact angles on polymers like polyethylene (PE)
and polyethylene terephthalate (PET) than on glass surfaces.
Hence it can be expected that vegetable oil would show better wetting behavior on polyester mesh rather than on glass
leading to the better oil collection on the polyester mesh.
The better performance of the aluminum mesh compared to
the glass beads could also be the result of the higher porosity
(greater than 0.9) of aluminum mesh.
4.3. E7ect of residence time
The e;ect of residence time of the suspension in the acoustic 5eld and in the porous medium was studied in two different ways: (a) by changing the volumetric 7ow rate of the
feed and keeping the dimensions of porous region constant;
and (b) by changing the dimensions of the porous medium
in the 7ow direction and keeping the volumetric 7ow rate of
the feed constant. For these experiments, 20-ppi polyester
mesh was used and 25.8 W of electrical power was applied
to the chamber. In the experiments performed to study the
e;ect of volumetric 7ow rate, the two 7ow rates used were
35 and 70 cm3 =min. These 7ow rates correspond to the linear velocities of 1.08 and 2:16 mm=s respectively and the
corresponding values of the residence time within the porous
medium are 69:4 s and 34:7 s respectively.
The separation performance was found to be very sensitive to the residence time. For the case of a 7ow rate
of 70 cm3 =min, the instantaneous percentage oil collection
within the porous medium dropped to 27% from its value
of 75% for the 7ow rate of 35 cm3 =min. Qualitatively, the
droplet size distributions for two cases are also di;erent. The
eOuent at the 7ow rate of 70 cm3 =min (shown in Fig. 6)
was found to contain a higher percentage of larger droplets
than the feed, which is opposite to the droplet size distribution observed using the 7ow rate of 35 cm3 =min (shown
in Fig. 5). This suggests that the porous medium does not
strongly enhance the oil retention process at low residence
times. The coalescence of smaller droplets in the acoustic
5eld to form larger droplets occurs on a time scale that is
much smaller than that required for the retention of these
drops within the porous medium. The relatively short residence time within the porous medium is not large enough
for the larger droplets (either originally present in the feed
or formed due to both the natural coalescence of smaller
droplets and induced coalescence due to acoustic 5eld) to be
retained within the porous medium. This occurs even though
the 7ow direction is opposite to that of the buoyancy e;ect.
In another type of experiment performed to study the e;ect
of residence time within the porous medium, the path length
of the emulsion was changed by altering the dimensions of

porous region in the 7ow direction. The experiments were

performed with the polyester mesh cut to half of its length
(in the 7ow direction) compared to that used in previous experiments. Thus the dimensions of the porous region were
37 mm long, 45 mm wide and 12 mm thick in the direction
of propagation of acoustic 5eld. The emulsions were fed to
the acoustic chamber from the top and the polyester mesh
was present in the upper half of the chamber. Thus, for a
7ow rate of 35 cm3 =min, the residence time of the emulsion
within the porous medium decreases to 34:7 s. However the
residence time within the acoustic 5eld was the same as before. Qualitatively, the droplet size distributions are similar
to those observed for full-length mesh (Fig. 5), but the percentage oil collection dropped to 49%. The results of these
experiments once again indicate that the percentage oil collection and thus the separation performance are highly sensitive to the residence time within porous medium and the
acoustic 5eld.
4.4. E7ect of electrical power
The acoustic 5eld intensity in the chamber is directly
related to the electrical power delivered to the piezoelectric transducer. However the exact relationship between the
two is complex, so the electrical power consumption was
used as a measure of acoustic intensity in the chamber.
Table 4 summarizes the results for these experiments. For
these experiments, 20-ppi polyester mesh was used and the
feed 7ow rate was 35 cm3 =min. Once again, the droplet
size distributions are qualitatively similar to those shown in
Fig. 5, but the percentage oil collection increases from 62%
to 75% as applied power is increased from 6.3 to 25:8 W.
However, with an increase in power to 47:2 W, the percentage oil collection increases only to 80%. This limited
increase in retention could be attributed to acoustic streaming that can take place at high power (Gould et al., 1992),
which might o;set the e;ect of larger acoustic forces.
4.5. E7ect of pore size
The pore size of polyester mesh a;ects the absolute 7ow
velocity as well as the internal surface area. Smaller pores
provide a large internal surface area, but also higher absolute velocities. To study the e;ect of pore size on separation performance, experiments were performed with 10,
20 and 30-ppi polyester meshes, The feed 7ow rate was
35 cm3 =min and the applied power was 25:8 W. It was found
that the percentage oil collection improves only slightly with
decrease in pore-size with values for the 10, 20 and 30-ppi
meshes being 72%, 75% and 77%, respectively.
The collection of oil droplets inside the porous medium
is expected to be aided by their spreading on the internal
surface of the porous mesh. This is in contrast to the case
of solid particles, in which case the collection inside the
porous medium is due to the entrapment of particle 7ocs

G.D. Pangu, D.L. Feke / Chemical Engineering Science 59 (2004) 3183 3193

3191

Fig. 6. Droplet size distributions for feed and eOuent for the experiments with 20-ppi polyester mesh for the feed 7ow rate of 70 cm3 =min. The
corresponding oil retention is 27%.

Table 4
Results for the experiments with di;erent applied powers
Power (W)

No. of experiments, n

Oil retention (%)

6.3
25.8
47.2

3
3
3

62 3:60
75 4:00
80 4:00

within the void spaces of porous medium or the attachment

of individual particles or particle 7ocs to the internal surface of the porous medium (Gupta and Feke, 1997). Since
the retained oil can actually spread over the surface of the
porous medium thereby forming a 5lm, the porous medium
is unlikely to saturate quickly. This might also mean that for
the feed concentration tested, the 5ltration e9ciency is not
strongly dependent on pore size and available internal area
and hence only small improvement in 5ltration e9ciency is
observed with a decrease in pore size.
To study whether the porous medium can become saturated, experiments were performed with 20-ppi polyester
mesh at the feed 7ow rate of 35 cm3 =min and an applied
power of 25:8 W. The eOuent samples were collected at
10, 20 and 30 min after the acoustic 5eld was activated (in
three separate experiments) and analyzed for droplet size
distribution and oil concentration. Oil retention within the
chamber corresponding to the three cases was found to be
69%, 75% and 58%. These results indicate that the performance of the porous medium initially improves with time
but then it deteriorates. However the decline in the collection
e9ciency is slow compared to the analogous experiments
where the porous medium was used to trap solid particles in

a suspension (Gupta, 1997). In that case, the instantaneous

collection e9ciency eventually dropped to zero signaling
that the porous medium was saturated with particles. Such
conditions were never reached in any experiments using oil
droplets. Thus the current results with the oil droplets indicate that the wetting of the porous media by oil plays a vital
role in the collection of oil inside the porous medium.
4.6. Experiments with no applied 9eld
To study the tendency of the porous mesh to retain oil
droplets in absence of any acoustic force, experiments
were performed with no acoustic 5eld and a feed 7ow rate
of 35 cm3 =min. All three types of porous media (20-ppi
polyester mesh, 20-ppi aluminum mesh and glass beads)
were used in these experiments. The droplet counts for the
feed and eOuent are similar and the percentage oil collections observed are less than 10% for all three types of
porous media. This indicates that in the absence of acoustic
5eld, the porous medium cannot be e;ectively used to recover the oil droplets. The pore size in the media used in the
experiments is much larger compared to the droplet sizes
and the droplets can be collected on the porous medium
only after the acoustic force traps them, Also there is no
signi5cant di;erence in the performance of three media in
the absence of acoustic force while in the presence of sound
5eld, the performance di;ers signi5cantly. This indicates
that the natural a9nity between the porous medium and oil
phase may not be highly e;ective for oil recovery in the
absence of acoustic force.

3192

G.D. Pangu, D.L. Feke / Chemical Engineering Science 59 (2004) 3183 3193

5. Conclusions

A novel method for recovering the oil phase from aqueous

emulsions (oil droplets ranging in size from 1 to 15 m) has
been developed. A resonant ultrasonic 5eld of mild intensity,
propagated within a rectangular chamber that could be 5lled
with a porous medium can be used to trap the oil droplets.
These trapped oil droplets tend to coalesce and collect on
the internal surfaces of the chamber as well as the porous
medium used to 5ll the chamber. Three types of porous media were studied: glass beads, aluminum mesh and polyester
mesh and the separation performance was found to be better
(instantaneous oil retention e9ciency of up to 80%) with
the use of polyester mesh. The trends of 5ltration e9ciency
with respect to emulsion 7ow rate, path length, power and
internal area available for collection were studied. The 5ltration e9ciency was found to be strongly dependent on both
the emulsion 7ow rate and the path length, which implies
its sensitivity with respect to the residence time within the
porous medium. These experimental trends suggest that the
coalescence of oil droplets occurs much faster than their retention inside the porous medium. The separation e9ciency
also shows expected trends with electrical power, but was
not found to be strongly dependent on internal surface area
for the feed concentration tested which suggests that the
spreading of oil on porous medium plays a signi5cant role
in oil retention. These insights into the process would help
the detailed theoretical study of the process, which is the
subject of ongoing research. Higher separation e9ciencies
may be achieved by increasing the residence time within
the porous medium either by using a lower 7ow rate or by
increasing the length of porous medium in the 7ow direction. This could also be achieved by using a multi-stage approach. The continuous nature of operation, reasonable separation e9ciencies without the addition of third component
for phase separation, reduced tendency for saturation of the
porous medium with oil and adaptability to large-scale operation makes these methods potentially useful for practical
applications.

Notation
c
C
d
di
Eac
F
F1; ac
F2; ac
ni
R
Vp

longitudinal sound speed, m/s

volume concentration, m3 =m3
center-to-center distance between interacting
particles, m
droplet diameter, m
acoustic energy density, J=m3
acoustic contrast factor, dimensionless
primary acoustic force, N
secondary acoustic force, N
number concentration of droplets
radius of the particle, m
volume of the particle, m3

distance from a pressure antinode of a standing

wave, m
acoustic impedance, kg=m2 s

Greek letters
f
p






compressibility of the 7uid, m2 =N

compressibility of the particle, m2 =N
wave number of the acoustic 5eld, m1
acoustic wavelength, m
ratio of particle density to 7uid density, dimensionless
density, kg=m3
ratio of longitudinal sound speed in a particle to
that in a 7uid, dimensionless

Acknowledgements
The authors are grateful to Nestle R& D for its support
of this work through a Nestle Fellowship.
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