Experimental investigation of liquid disintegration on slotted disc in centrifugal atomization process

•Liquid disintegration phenomena was captured using high-speed imaging technique.•Different disintegration modes of droplet formation are observed in slotted disc.•Finer size droplets with a narrow size distribution are produced using slotted disc.•A new correlation is proposed to predict the droplet size for slotted disc. In this experimental work, liquid disintegration mode (formation of the sheet, ligament and direct drop) on the spinning disc has been investigated with the help of the high-speed imaging technique. To achieve fine size droplets, different slots (5 mm & 3 mm) were designed on the plain disc surface and their performance has been tested experimentally in terms of mean droplet size and their distributions. Images of droplets were captured from the front side of the spinning disc to observe the droplet formation mechanism closely at the edge of the disc. The influence of atomizer configuration on liquid disintegration modes has been analyzed and compared for the cases of the plain and slotted disc. It is observed that the slot on disc has a considerable effect on the transition of disintegration mode and reduction in the droplet size. Further, correlations are proposed to predict the mean droplet size as a function of design and operational variable in terms of dimensionless groups like Reynolds number (Re), Weber number (We) and Ohnesorge number (Oh) for the slotted disc and compared with plain disc.