Effect of Ethanol on the Solubilization of Hydrocarbon Emulsion Droplets in Nonionic Surfactant Micelles

✍ Scribed by John N. Coupland; Dason Brathwaite; Peter Fairley; D.Julian McClements

• Publisher: Elsevier Science
• Year: 1997
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 127 KB
• Volume: 190
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 0021-9797
• DOI: 10.1006/jcis.1997.4862

✦ Synopsis

The addition of surfactant micelles to the aqueous phase Light scattering was used to study the effects of ethanol on the of a preexisting oil-in-water emulsion can significantly alter mass transport of hydrocarbon molecules from emulsion droplets the concentration, size distribution, phase behavior and comto nonionic surfactant micelles. n-Hexadecane oil-in-water emulposition of the droplets because of solubilization of some of sions ( 10 wt% ) with a mean droplet diameter of 0.97 mm stabilized the emulsified oil in the hydrophobic interior of the micelles by 2 wt% polyoxyethylene sorbitan monolaurate, were prepared. (7)(8)(9)(10)(11)(12). In previous studies, we investigated the effect of These emulsions were diluted to 0.04 wt% n -hexadecane using a oil concentration, droplet diameter, polydispersity (7, 9, 12), series of aqueous solutions containing different concentrations of and oil type (10, 11) on the properties of oil-in-water emulethanol ( 0 to 20 wt%) and polyoxyethylene sorbitan monolaurate sions in the presence of surfactant micelles. The objective (0 or 2 wt% ). The time dependence of the droplet concentration and size distribution were monitored at 30ЊC using light scatter-of the current work is to investigate the effect of ethanol, a ing. The molecular flux of the solubilization process increased nonsurface-active aqueous component (13), on the solubiliwith increasing ethanol concentration, but the maximum amount zation process.

of oil solubilized per unit amount of surfactant was independent of ethanol concentration. The data are interpreted in terms of EXPERIMENTAL PROCEDURES the molecular processes that occur during solubilization.