Effect of flow structure and colloidal forces on aggregation rate of small solid particles suspended in aqueous solutions

In this paper aggregation of small solid particles in the perikinetic and orthokinetic regimes is considered. An aggregation kernel for colloidal particles is determined by solving the convection-diffusion equation for the pair probability function of the solid particles subject to simple shear and extensional flow patterns and DLVO potential field. Using the solution of the full model the applicability regions of simplified collision kernels from the literature are recognized and verified for a wide range of Péclet numbers. In the stable colloidal systems the assumption which considers only the flow pattern in a certain boundary layer around central particle results in a reasonable accuracy of the particle collision rate. However, when the influence of convective motion becomes more significant one should take into account the full flow field in a more rigorous manner and solve the convection-diffusion equation directly. Finally, the influence of flow pattern and process parameters on aggregation rate is discussed.