Emulsion emulsification protocol

An accurate formulation handling is extremely useful not only to make microemulsion and to adjust their properties such as their solubilisation ability, or to attain a low interfacial tension to ease emulsification or to enhance oil recovery. Formulation has been shown to be also directly linked with emulsion properties such as their type, stability, viscosity, drop size [6] and with the efficiency of the emulsification protocol [7]. The existence and persistence of foams are dependent on formulation too [8]. Solid surface wetting is also linked with formulation as well as with many related applications. This is why an accurate numerical treatment of formulation issues is paramount in industrial research and development. 

Other emulsification protocols are based on a transient phenomenon, in which a dominant role is played by an unsteady mechanism, e.g., rrutss transfer through interface, which is not easy to ascertain or control. Often the nonequilib-riuin is driven by a continuously programmed change in a single variable such as temperature, amount or type of surfactant, watcr-to-oil ratio, etc., so that a phase behavior fionlicr is crossed and some event such as an emulsion inversion... 

The emulsion drop size depends on such a high number of different variables that it is difficult to separate and impute ail effects. In what follows a standard emulsification protocol is applied to a preequilibraied system, so that the change in drop size is only due to formulation or composition effects, or their direct consequences on other properties such as tension, stability, and viscosity. In fact, very few maps have been experimentally determined and only trend.s are available (SI.92). 

Emulsification and demulsification are both eomplex processes. However, as noted earlier, demulsifieation is by no means the opposite of emulsification (200,201). This is especially the case in the petroleum industry. In order to demulsify a crude W/O emulsion efficiently, it has been emphasized that it is advantageous to understand first the characteristics of the emulsions, the nature of interfaeial films, and hence the causes of stability. Accordingly, in choosing a demulsification protocol, one would first identify key factors responsible for the stabihty, find the target properties to modify toward destabilization, introduce sufficient energy to promote coalescence, and find the best conditions to allow phase separation. 

The emulsions discussed in the previous sections were prepared at fixed formulation and composition in the map. In practice, the formulation and composition of a system can change as time elapses or as emulsification proceeds. For instance, one of the phases could be added little by little, such as oil drops in a homemade mayonnaise preparation. In another case, the formulation or temperature could be changed according to certain programming protocol as in emulsion pol5unerization. 

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