A high-speed camera has been used to visualize the drop breakup process at turbulent conditions in a rotor - stator mixer and through an orifice in a pipe. Two special cases were considered: the breakup of diluted emulsions and the breakup of single oil droplets. Two mineral oils of moderate viscosity were dispersed in two different continuous phases, tap water and a continuous phase formed by a mixture of substitute ocean water and the anionic surfactant STEOL CS-330 (Stepan Company). For the case of breakup in the rotor - stator mixer, two mechanisms were identified. An initial fragmentation is caused by the combination of the vortex (generated by the circular motion of the rotor) and the jet zone emerging from the stator holes. The second mechanism is a mechanical breakup caused by the high shear stresses that droplets suffer in the rotor - stator gap. In the case of breakup through an orifice in a pipe, it was shown that breakage only occurs downstream of the restriction and takes place at a certain distance from the edge of the orifice. At this breakup length, the radial velocity gradient in the flow is large enough to overcome the resistance stresses (exerted by the droplet) and produce the rupture of the droplet. These results were in agreement with previous observations made Galinat et al. (2005) for the case of drop breakup through an orifice plate. However, from the observations made in this work, it was possible to conclude that the orifice length does not influence the breakup mechanisms. In addition, visualization has allowed to analyze the relative influence of interfacial tension and dispersed phase viscosity for both cases. Experimental values for the maximum stable drop diameter were obtained for the breakup of diluted oil-in-water emulsions in both studied cases. Analysis of the data revealed that maximum stable drop sizes were in the inertial sub range, characterized exclusively by the energy dissipation rate per unit mass, Epsilon. A linear mechanistic model for the inertial sub-range, based in Kolmogorov s theory of isotropic turbulence, was developed to aid in data interpretation and to provide a basis for correlation. The model was adjusted to experimental data using a nonlinear optimization tool based in the generalized reduced gradient code (GRG2), and its precision was calculated from the root mean squared difference between experimental and predicted data. Good predictions were obtained for the breakup in the mixer; however, this was not the case for the breakup through the orifice. The relative low precision of the model used to correlate the breakup through the restriction lied in the lack of consideration of the time scale required for the breakup. In addition, a linear curve fitting based in a power law model, showed that interfacial effects drive the breakup process in the restriction.