On the Impact of Liquid Drops on Immiscible Liquids

The release of liquid hydrocarbons into the water is one of the environmental issues that have attracted more attention after deepwater horizon oil spill in Gulf of Mexico. The understanding of the interaction between liquid droplets impacting on an immiscible fluid is important for cleaning up oil spills as well as the demulsification process. Here we study the impact of low-viscosity liquid drops on high-viscosity liquid pools, e.g. water and ethanol droplets on a silicone oil 10cSt bath. We use an ultrafast camera and image processing to provide a detailed description of the impact phenomenon. Our observations suggest that viscosity and density ratio of the two media play a major role in the post-impact behavior. When the droplet density is larger than that of the pool, additional cavity is generated inside the pool. However, if the density of the droplet is lower than the pool, droplet momentary penetration may be facilitated by high impact velocities. In crown splash regime, the pool properties as well as drop properties play an important role. In addition, the appearance of the central jet is highly affected by the properties of the impacting droplet. In general, the size of generated daughter droplets as well as the thickness of the jet is reduced compared to the impact of droplets with the pool of an identical fluid.