Interaction of a homogeneous chemical reaction and mass transfer in a single moving droplet

Abstract Mass transfer with a superimposed homogeneous chemical reaction was investigated in the system cyclohexanol (continuous phase)/methyl chloroacetate (transferred component)/sodium hydroxide (dispersed phase). The unsteady mass transfer was measured applying a counter current flow cell for single droplets. The obtained experimental data were compared with CFD simulations, which already have been used successfully for a single drop system with a very fast homogeneous chemical reaction. In this paper the investigated system was selected to be in a regime where the rates of mass transfer and chemical reaction are in the same order of magnitude, so none of them can be considered rate-determining. Additionally, numerical simulations were carried out in order to quantify the results of the interactions between mass transfer and chemical reaction for the specific system.