Thinning of a vertical free-draining aqueous film incorporating colloidal particles

The drainage under gravity of a vertical foam film formed on a wire frame has been investigated. Dual-wavelength optical interferometry was used so that unambiguous fringe order assignments could be made, enabling absolute film thicknesses to be calculated with confidence. Films were stabilized by n...

Ausführliche Beschreibung

Bibliographische Detailangaben
Veröffentlicht in:Langmuir : the ACS journal of surfaces and colloids. - 1992. - 26(2010), 1 vom: 05. Jan., Seite 63-73
1. Verfasser: Tan, Su N (VerfasserIn)
Weitere Verfasser: Yang, Yujie, Horn, Roger G
Format: Online-Aufsatz
Sprache:English
Veröffentlicht: 2010
Zugriff auf das übergeordnete Werk:Langmuir : the ACS journal of surfaces and colloids
Schlagworte:Journal Article
Beschreibung
Zusammenfassung:The drainage under gravity of a vertical foam film formed on a wire frame has been investigated. Dual-wavelength optical interferometry was used so that unambiguous fringe order assignments could be made, enabling absolute film thicknesses to be calculated with confidence. Films were stabilized by nonionic polypropylene glycol surfactant. Half-micrometer silica particles with varying degrees of hydrophobicity were added to the film-forming liquid to investigate their effect on film drainage rate and stability. Hydrophilic particles had little or no effect, while hydrophobic particles slowed the drainage of the film and caused a minor increase in film lifetime, from approximately 10 to approximately 30 s. In both the hydrophilic and hydrophobic cases the films ruptured when they reached a thickness of approximately 2 particle diameters. Particles of intermediate hydrophobicity had the most significant effect, increasing film lifetime by an order of magnitude over that for hydrophilic particles. The intermediate particles allowed films to thin down to a thickness less than the particle diameter, indicating that particles bridge across the entire film. This did not occur with more hydrophobic particles even though they were embedded in each of the two film surfaces. These results correlate well with previous literature on particle-laden foams. The film thickness and drainage measurements allow drainage mechanisms for the different particles to be identified, thus providing a mechanistic explanation for the observation by several previous authors that foams formed in the presence of particles, for example during mineral processing, have the greatest stability when the particles are of intermediate hydrophobicity
Beschreibung:Date Completed 02.03.2010
Date Revised 29.12.2009
published: Print
Citation Status PubMed-not-MEDLINE
ISSN:1520-5827
DOI:10.1021/la9021118