A Lewis cell type of agitated vessel was designed and used to determine the effects of physical properties on the mass transfer coefficient, by Colburn-Welsh technique, for three partially miscible binary system and two immiscible ternary system. The Considered variables were the agitation speed of two phases, the molecular diffusivities of solutes, and the interfacial tension.
The effects of the first phase Reynolds number $Re_2$ and the second phase Reynolds number $Re_2$ on mass transfer coefficient were as follows. The first phase mass transfer coefficient $K_1$ was proportional to about 0.7 power of $Re_1$, when there was no agitation in the second phase.
When $Re_2$≠0, on the other hand, $K_1$ approached an asymptotic value which depended only on $Re_2$, at small values of $Re_1$, but the effect of $Re_2$ diminished with increasing $Re_1$.
The effect of the molecular diffusivities of solutes on mass transfer coefficient was investigated by the mutual saturation technique and, in this study, the first phase mass transfer coefficient was found to depend on the 0.52 power of D over 44 points of binary system.
The effect of the interfacial tension has been taken into account for $Ca_1$│${\Delta}{\rho}$│${\rho}_1$≪178, and for the binary system, it was not considered because of its comparatively small value.
From these results, the reliable correlation was obtained as follows;
$Sh_1 = 0.116 Sc_1^{0.48}exp$(1.60{\times}10^{-4} \frac{\upsilon_2}{\upsilon_1} Re_2) Re_1^{0.70}$
But the theoretical mass transfer coefficients for the ternary system evaluated from this equation, were not good agreement with the experimental values.
It was considered that this deviation was due to the effect of large value of interfacial tension, so the observed Sherwood numbers for the first phase, $Sh_1$ were correlated in terms of capillary number $Ca_1$ in addition to the Reynolds number, $Re_1, Re_2$, and Schmidt number $Sc_1$.
The obtained correlation represented the ternary system as well as binary system with a maximum deviation of 30 % as follows
$Sh_1 = 1.93{\times}10^{-3} Ca_1^{1/2} Sc_1^{0.48} exp(1.60{\times}10^{-4} \frac{\upsilon2}{\upsilon_1} Re_2)Re_1^{0.70}$