Experimental and computational study of mass transport in novel emulsion systems : strategies for reaction engineering and microparticle preparation

Emulsions are complex fluids with interesting physiochemical properties, which have been widely used in health and personal care, food, coating, and manufacturing, etc.. Rather than considering emulsions as passive materials, they can also be used as active blocks for material preparation and chemical synthesis. This thesis presents a study of mass transport phenomena in two specific types of emulsion systems: microfluidic emulsions and concentrated food emulsions. For microfluidic emulsion systems, the first mass transport phenomenon studied is the exchange of chemicals between microfluidic droplets, which are 10-100 pm in size, and nanodroplets, which are dispersed as a nano- or mini-emulsion. Chemically, thermally, or electrically induced coalescence and micelle activity control the mass exchange between micro- and nano-droplets, leading to applications in reaction engineering and microparticle preparation.

Name thesis:degree_name

Doctoral

Department dc:contributor.department

Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Chemical Engineering

Grantor dc:publisher

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Year dc:date.issued

2018

Author dc:creator

• Gu, Tonghan.

Advisor dc:contributor.advisor

• T. Alan Hatton and Saif A. Khan.

• Chemical Engineering.

Statement dc:rights

• MIT theses are protected by copyright. They may be viewed, downloaded, or printed from this source but further reproduction or distribution in any format is prohibited without written permission.

Licence dc:rights.uri

• http://dspace.mit.edu/handle/1721.1/7582

Language dc:language.iso

eng

Handle dc:identifier.uri

https://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/121891

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:dspace.mit.edu:1721.1/121891