The interfacial area per unit volume is one of the key parameters for the design of multiphase reactors. In this work a population balance approach is applied to calculate the interfacial area density in a bubble column. The resulting transport equation for the arithmetic bubble volume is coupled with the balance equations for mass and momentum. In addition the physical absorption of the gas ph...

We investigated in laboratory column experiments, the aqueous-phase transport of four n-alcohols (n-hexanol-nnonanol), three chlorinated aromatic compounds (chlorobenzene, o-dichlorobenzene, and o-chlorophenol), and two alkylbenzenes (ethylbenzene and p-xylene) in a waterunsaturated porous medium (sand). The influence of gasphase partitioning and interfacial adsorption on solute retardation dur...

Complex coacervation, a liquid-liquid phase separation that occurs when two oppositely charged polyelectrolytes are mixed in a solution, has the potential to be exploited for many emerging applications including wet adhesives and drug delivery vehicles. The ultra-low interfacial tension of coacervate systems against water is critical for such applications, and it would be advantageous if molecu...

Microorganisms synthesise a wide range of surface-active compounds (SAC), generally called biosurfactants. These compounds are mainly classified according to their molecular weight, physico-chemical properties and mode of action. The low-molecular-weight SACs or biosurfactants reduce the surface tension at the air/water interfaces and the interfacial tension at oil/water interfaces, whereas the...

Since the discovery of microemulsions, they have attained increasing significance both in basic research and in industry. Due to their unique properties, namely, ultralow interfacial tension, large interfacial area, thermodynamic stability and the ability to solubilize otherwise immiscible liquids, uses and applications of microemulsions have been numerous. The objective of this review is to pr...

Nanoparticles (NPs) and surfactants can spontaneously concentrate at the interface between two immiscible liquids, such as oil and water. Systems of high oil–water interfacial area, such as emulsions, are the basis of many industries and consumer products. Although NPs and surfactants are currently incorporated into many of these applications, their mutual interfacial behavior is not completely...

The conservation of interfacial water molecules has only been studied in small data sets consisting of interfaces of a specific function. So far, no general conclusions have been drawn from large-scale analysis, due to the challenges of using structural alignment in large data sets. To avoid using structural alignment, we propose a solvated sequence method to analyse water conservation properti...

Adding small fractions of cholesterol decreases the interfacial viscosity of dipalmitoylphosphatidylcholine (DPPC) monolayers by an order of magnitude per wt %. Grazing incidence X-ray diffraction shows that cholesterol at these small fractions does not mix ideally with DPPC but rather induces nanophase separated structures of an ordered, primarily DPPC phase bordered by a line-active, disorder...

The effect of molecular architecture of a surfactant, particularly the attachment position of benzene sulfonate on the hexadecane backbone, at the decane-water interface was investigated using atomistic MD simulations. We consider a series of surfactant isomers in the family of alkyl benzene sulfonates, denoted by m-C16, indicating a benzene sulfonate group attached to the mth carbon in a hexad...

Recent spectrophotometric and molecular dynamics simulation studies have shown that the physicochemical properties and structures of water in the vicinity of hydrophobic surfaces differ from those of the bulk water. However, the interfacial water acting as a separation medium on hydrophobic surfaces has never been detected and quantified experimentally. In this study, we show that small inorgan...