We report the results of a systematic study of the effect of the surface energy of the walls of microchannels on emulsification in parallel flow-focusing microfluidic devices. We investigated the formation of water-in-oil (W/O) and oil-in-water (O/W) emulsions and found that the stability of microfluidic emulsification depends critically on the preferential wetting of the walls of the microflui...

Sophorolipids (SLs), produced by Candida bombicola, are of interest as potential replacements for hazardous commercial surfactants. For the first time, a series of molecularly edited SLs with ethyl (EE), n-hexyl (HE), and n-decyl (DE) esters were evaluated at an oil (almond oil)-water interface for their ability to reduce interfacial tension (IFT) and generate stable emulsions. An increase in t...

A series of alkyl chain modified graphene oxides (AmGO) with different alkyl chain length and content was fabricated using a reducing reaction between graphene oxide (GO) and alkyl amine. Then AmGO was used as a graphene-based particle emulsifier to stabilize Pickering emulsion. Compared with the emulsion stabilized by GO, which was oil-in-water type, all the emulsions stabilized by AmGO were w...

In this study, various water-soluble and oil-soluble demulsifiers were selected for separation of water from crude oil emulsions and their productivity measured using the Bottle-test method at 70 °C and 10 ppm concentration. The best ones among 23 demulsifiers examined through the screening process were fatty alcohol ethoxylate, triethanol amine and urea from the water-soluble group and Basoror...

Conventional emulsions are heterogeneous system in which one immiscible liquid is dispersed as droplets in another liquid. That may be water-in-oil or oil-in-water emulsions. However emulsion can be formulated waterless or without an aqueous phase to produce anhydrous or non-aqueous or oil-in-oil emulsions may be used as reservoirs to deliver lipophilic or hydrolytically unstable drugs, could b...

An emulsifier is a molecule with a hydrophobic/lypophilic end and hydrophilic end,respectively. Emulsifiers are used in stabilizing various oil-in-water and water-in-oil emulsions by reducing the surface energy and surface tension of the two interfaces. They find wide applications in food and pharmaceutical industries. Many of the emulsifiers can be obtained from natural sources. Some of them i...

Superhydrophobic/superoleophilic surfaces (water contact angle greater than 150◦ with low hysteresis, with an oil contact angle smaller than 5◦) have a wide-range of applications in oil/water separation. However, most of the essential methods to fabricate this kind of surface are complex, inflexible, and costly. Moreover, most methods focus on separating immiscible oil and water mixtures but la...

A collaboration between WPI and ENSIC was undertaken to investigate the properties of emulsions as a drug delivery system. The use of biocompatible amphiphilic polymers as emulsifiers for controlled drug delivery is a relatively new technology. The emulsifier acts as a barrier between phases in oil-in-water emulsions to increase stability. Oil soluble drug substances can then be encapsulated wi...

We have investigated the dynamic rheological properties of concentrated multiple emulsions to characterize their amphiphile composition at interfaces. Multiple emulsions (W1/O/W2) consist of water droplets (W1) dispersed into oil globules (O), which are redispersed in an external aqueous phase (W2). A small-molecule surfactant and an amphiphilic polymer were used to stabilize the inverse emulsi...

Oil in water emulsions of several vegetable oils were studied in order to prepare a useful lubrication fluid. Several previously uncharacterized systems were studied in this paper, including those made from epoxidized vegetable oils. A series of different surfactants were studied in order to obtain emulsions suitable for lubrication applications. The epoxidized oils were found to form stable oi...