Breaking emulsions

Abstract

Droplet coalescence is the key to breaking emulsions, that is, separating oil from water. This process underpins the recovery of crude oil and the remediation of industrial and environmental waste-waters. Through a unique and novel experimental program that simultaneously tracks drop trajectories up to the millimetre scale and drop deformations in the nanometre scale, this project aims to fill a fundamental gap in our understanding of such coalescence events. A complete theoretical model of coalescence will result, forming a predictive framework for separating emulsions to recover pure oil and water, and laying the foundation for using compound drops to tune the optical properties of surface..

Related publications (2)

Measurement of surface and interfacial tension using pendant drop tensiometry

Joseph D Berry, Michael J Neeson, Raymond R Dagastine, Derek YC Chan, Rico F Tabor

2015-09-15

Compound Pendant Drop Tensiometry for Interfacial Tension Measurement at Zero Bond Number

Michael J Neeson, Derek YC Chan, Rico F Tabor

2014-12-30