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Stability of Concentrated Emulsions

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Book cover Emulsion Science

Abstract

The lifetime of emulsions may vary considerably from one system to another; it can change from minutes to many years, depending on the nature of the surfactants, the nature of both phases, and their volume ratio. Despite the large amount of work devoted to this issue, predicting the destruction scenario and the emulsion lifetime still raises challenging questions, especially with regard to concentrated emulsions. Irreversible coarsening of emulsions may proceed through two distinct mechanisms. The first mechanism, known as Ostwald ripening [1], is driven by the difference in Laplace pressure between droplets having different radii: the dispersed phase is transferred from the smaller to the larger droplets. The rate of droplet growth may be determined by the molecular diffusion across the continuous phase and/or by the permeation across the surfactant films. The second mechanism, known as coalescence, consists of the rupture of the thin film that forms between droplets, leading them to fuse into a single one. At a microscopic scale, a coalescence event proceeds through the nucleation of a thermally activated hole that reaches a critical size above which it becomes unstable and grows.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. ISTAB, Université Bordeaux 1, Avenue des facultés, 33405, Talence, FRANCE

    Fernando Leal-Calderon

  2. ESPCI, Laboratoire Colloïdes et Matériaux Divisés, 10 rue Vauquelin, 75231, Paris, FRANCE

    Jérôme Bibette

  3. Centre de Recherche Paul Pascal, CNRS, 33600, Pessac, FRANCE

    Véronique Schmitt

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  1. Fernando Leal-Calderon
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  2. Jérôme Bibette
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  3. Véronique Schmitt
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Leal-Calderon, F., Bibette, J., Schmitt, V. (2007). Stability of Concentrated Emulsions. In: Emulsion Science. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-0-387-39683-5_6

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