Experimental Study of Water Jet Break-Up in and Supercritical Carbon Dioxide

Water jets in systems at low pressure have been frequently studied and some models for the prediction of spray cone angle (θ/2), intact-surface break-up length (L₁), and intact-core break-up length (L₂) have been developed. Complete studies of jets in supercritical receiving medium have not been carried out; for this reason, in this work, an experimental study on the observation of water jet break-up in supercritical carbon dioxide has been proposed. Different operating conditions were tested and jet characteristics in terms of θ/2, L₁, and L₂ were studied. The obtained data were first fitted using the models proposed in the literature; then, a model was developed in this work, which takes into account the influence of pressure in the evaluation of the spray cone angle. The proposal of a pressure-dependent correlation revealed to be effective in the description of the sprays generated in supercritical conditions.