Using emulsion inversion in industrial processes

✍ Scribed by Jean-Louis Salager; Ana Forgiarini; Laura Márquez; Alejandro Peña; Aldo Pizzino; Marı́a P Rodriguez; Marianna Rondón-González

• Publisher: Elsevier Science
• Year: 2004
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 391 KB
• Volume: 108-109
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 0001-8686
• DOI: 10.1016/j.cis.2003.10.008

✦ Synopsis

Emulsion inversion is a complex phenomenon, often perceived as an instability that is essentially uncontrollable, although many industrial processes make use of it. A research effort that started 2 decades ago has provided the two-dimensional and three-dimensional description, the categorization and the theoretical interpretation of the different kinds of emulsion inversion. A clear-cut phenomenological approach is currently available for understanding its characteristics, the factors that influence it and control it, the importance of fine-tuning the emulsification protocol, and the crucial occurrence of organized structures such as liquid crystals or multiple emulsions. The current know-how is used to analyze some industrial processes involving emulsion inversion, e.g. the attainment of a fine nutrient or cosmetic emulsion by temperature or formulation-induced transitional inversion, the preparation of a silicone oil emulsion by catastrophic phase inversion, the manufacture of a viscous polymer latex by combined inversion and the spontaneous but enigmatic inversion of emulsions used in metal working operations such as lathing or lamination.