This paper investigates the effect of liquid flow and oil pad thickness
on the droplet size and separation performance. The findings show that
increasing the inlet flow rates of the oil and water results in size
reduction of the droplets. Increasing the thickness of the oil pad
increases the size of the droplets. The measured data were fitted with a
simple Gaussian model, and the fitted parameters of mean, standard
deviation and amplitude were determined for each data set. Trends have
been obtained from the fitted parameters as a function of the Reynolds
number. The key parameter to predict and fix the position of the
Gaussian distribution was found to be the mean droplet size. Simple Ab
initio calculation methods to estimate this parameter was tested against
the experimental data to identify the most promising method to predict
this parameter for modelling purposes.