Predicting droplet breakup and coalescence in stirred tanks

Boehringer Ingelheim works with M-Star to model droplet formation, breakup, and coalescence in turbulent liquid–liquid stirred-tank dispersions. The study compared high-resolution two-fluid, Eulerian–Lagrangian, and Eulerian–Parcel approaches for predicting droplet-size distributions across different operating conditions and evaluated the results against measured data and first-principles turbulence theory. The work demonstrates M-Star’s ability to resolve complex multiphase mixing behavior and predict a key process outcome—the resulting droplet-size distribution.