Characterization of gelatinized corn starch suspensions and resulting drop size distributions after effervescent atomization

Effervescent atomization is a promising method for economical atomization of high viscous liquids like gelatinized corn starch suspensions. The gelatinization of starch has strong influence on the viscosity of starch suspensions. It was characterized adapting a method for determination of the gelatinization degree. Rheological properties of gelatinized corn starch suspensions with concentrations ranging from 5 to 7 wt.-% were investigated. Effervescent atomization proved to be largely invariant to variations of liquid viscosity in this range. Relative gas injection pressure proved to be of highest influence on the resulting drop size distribution when varying only atomizer geometry. Applying Abel inversion to drop size measurement results depicted the opposite trend of drop sizes depending on radial position in the spray than observed by other researchers working with aqueous glass bead suspensions. Compared to conventional external mixing pneumatic atomization a reduction of atomization gas quantity of up to four times could be achieved.