The process of atomisation is of primary importance in several branches of engineering, such as in the combustion of liquid fuels, in the chemical industry, in operations involving drying, evaporation, absorption, and so on, in fire-fighting and the production and dissipation of fogs and in agriculture.

In agriculture, the spraying of small drops is employed in the dissemination of insecticides, herbicides, etc., for the purpose of crop protection, and the spraying of large drops is used for overhead irrigation.

Since the advent of the atomiser, a hundred years ago, the engineer has been in advance of theory in his practice of atomisation. For lack of fundamental data he has had to rely upon laborious hit and miss experiments to obtain a design suitable to a particular requirement. Thus the atomiser has been a fruitful avenue for the inventor. Its small size and apparent simplicity has, however, deceived many into the belief that the problem is simple. Research over the last thirty years has proved this to be anything but true, and even now our knowledge is still extremely limited.