Abstract
Recent advances in the application of electric fields to interface modification, leading to drop breakup and coalescence in liquid-liquid dispersions or particle aggregation in solid-liquid suspensions, are reviewed in this article. Potential new applications based on electrospray and electrocoalescence of droplets are discussed. Both of these phenomena may occur under applied electric fields and may apply to drops, particles or bubbles. Several industrial applications take advantage of electric fields. Some of these applications are based on well-understood phenomena, such as normal electrospray of droplets (e.g., as in ink jet printing), while others are less understood (e.g., inverse electrospray). Recent developments of electric-field effects and applications, as well as expected future directions, are discussed.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Pages (from-to) | 249-255 |
| Number of pages | 7 |
| Journal | Current Opinion in Colloid and Interface Science |
| Volume | 9 |
| Issue number | 3-4 |
| DOIs | |
| State | Published - Nov 2004 |
Funding
Support for this work was provided by the Office of Basic Energy Sciences, Division of Chemical Sciences, U.S. Department of Energy, under contract DE-AC05-00OR22725 with UT-Battelle, LLC. The authors are also thankful to Dr. Marsha Savage for editing the manuscript.
Keywords
- Electrocoalescence
- Electrodistillation
- Electroextraction
- Electrohydrodynamics
- Electromixing
- Electrospray
- Phase separation