Chemie Ingenieur Technik, Vol.76, No.4, 376-383, 2004
Emulsification using microstructured systems
In the last century, research on several methods for the production of emulsions has been carried out. In order to disperse one phase into another phase which is immiscible or poorly miscible in the first phase, several kinds of processes are available. An example for emulsions where small oil droplets are dispersed into a continuous water phase is mayonnaise. In margarine, water droplets are dispersed into a continuous oil phase. in this publication, three emulsification methods are presented. First of all membrane emulsification was developed by NAKASHIMA in the early 1990ies. This process uses microporous membranes to disperse one phase into another one. The disperse phase is pressed through the pores and detached by the flow of the continuous phase. This results in the production of an emulsion with a narrow droplet size distribution at mild process conditions. Another process using membranes for the production of emulsions is premix membrane emulsification, developed by SUZUKI in the late 1990ies. Droplets of a coarse emulsion are disrupted by passing the entire emulsion through the pores of a membrane. Compared to the aforementioned method, higher production rates are possible. NAKAJIMA applied the so called microchannels in emulsification technology. Compared to other emulsification methods, these three processes provide several advantages.