Scaling analysis of the electrospray process in pharmaceutical encapsulation chamber

Electrohydrodynamic Atomization (EHDA), also referred to as the electrospray process, has been recently developed to fabricate polymeric micro- or nano-particles as well as fibers for drugencapsulation. EHDA in the cone-jet mode can produce highly monodisperse aerosols. As a resultof strong electric forces, liquid droplets can be created by the electrospray process and converted into solid particles. In this study EHDA was carried out in a glass chamber in which solidpharmaceutical particles were fabricated after evaporating the solvent from sprayed droplets.Systematic scaling analysis, based on experimental results, was conducted on the governingequations in the current EHDA system. The final results confirmed that the particle acceleration, gravitational and Saffman lift forces are not important in comparison to the electrical field and flow field forces for the EHDA apparatus and conditions used in this study. Furthermore, scaling analysis permitted collapsing all the collection efficiency data onto a universal plot as a functionof one dimensionless group that incorporates all the process parameters. This plot can be used to determine the effect on the collection efficiency of operating as well as geometrical parameters

کلیدواژه ها:

electrohydrodynamic atomization ، mathematical modelling ، particle processing ، pharmaceuticals ، multiphase flow ، scaling analysis