Several processes used in research and industry are based on liquid-liquid extraction, a method designed for selective separation of products in a mixture. In liquid-liquid extraction, two immiscible liquids are contacted: an aqueous phase and an organic phase, one of which generally contains an extractant molecule capable of transferring the desired elements to the other phase. The transfer occurs at the contact surface between the two phases. After transfer, both phases are separated by settling. In practice, these operations are performed in industrial apparatus. In order to optimize the operation of these devices, it's important to determine the fundamental characteristics of the emulsion. These include parameters related to the fluid flow velocity as well as parameters related to fluid mixing such as the interfacial area, hold-up, and size distribution of the droplets population. Numerous imaging techniques can be used to measure these parameters. One of them, digital holography, is well-known for allowing complete reconstruction of information about a 3D flow in a single shot. This PhD work deals with a direct application of digital in line holography to droplets rising in a continuous liquid phase. The droplet size imposes a regime of intermediate-field diffraction hardly explored to date. Acquired diffraction patterns show that the usual dark disk model is not valid and that good agreement is obtained with a mixed model coupling thin lens with opaque disk. Hologram focusing is nevertheless performed with a dedicated automated method. A literature review has been conducted to identify the sharpest autofocus function for our application. In a second step, in order to measure high retention rates, an inverse problem approach is applied on all the outliers and missing droplets. This hologram restitution treatment has been applied to experimental results with a comparison to independent measurements. The main results obtained with calibrated droplets are presented detailing the test device and instrumentation. They have validated the relevance of holography for the characterization of emulsions.
In line digital holography measurement for liquid-liquid flow : application to the characterization of emulsions produced in pulsed column