Emulsions research needs

The final steps to a synthetic blood depend completely upon good chemistry tailored to meet the exact needs of the body Fluorocarbons, such as perfluorodecalin, recently have been found to induce hypennflated lungs when given either intravenously as an emulsion or mtratracheally as a neat liquid [18, 19] But this and other physiological side effects are now understood, and research is well advanced to prevent undesirable side effects in medical applications of fluorocarbon liquids... 

There is considerable effort being spent in research laboratories on means for matching emulsions and demulsifiers. Most of this work involves attempts to characterize and classify the emulsions and demulsifiers, thus determining common factors that indicate the proper demulsifiers for specific emulsions. While much information has been gained, it is not sufficient to produce a usable result. Emulsions and demulsifiers are extremely complex and much more work will be needed before there can be any hope for practical use of this approach. 

Finally, an area which is in need of much further research is that of the dielectric properties of two-phase systems such as frozen foods, emulsions, whips and foams. It is well known that the dielectric behavior of particles of one dielectric property imbedded in a substrate of another, behave very differently from a distributive mixture of both. Fricke (1955) developed a model for randomly oriented oblate spheroids suspended in a continuous medium. It is expected that this model may be used successfully to model two-phase food systems, but to date there is very little literature reporting such studies. 

The presence of natural organic acids in some crude oils, especially asphaltic crude oils, may eliminate the need for expensive surfactants. These acids react with strong alkali (usually NaOH) to form petroleum soaps. These soaps diffuse into the oil-water interface, decrease interfacial tension, and form emulsions. Many researchers have used dilute alkali solutions (—0.1 wt% NaOH) to form stable oil-in-water emulsions containing up to 75% oil (i, 3). 

From R D to quality control, rheology measurements for each phase of the product development life cycle involve raw materials, premixes, solutions, dispersions, emulsions, and full formulations. Well-equipped laboratories with stress- and strain-controlled oscillatory/steady shear rheometers and viscometers can generally satisfy most characterization needs. When necessary, customized systems are designed to simulate specific user or process conditions. Rheology measurements are also coupled with optic, thermal, dielectric, and other analytical methods to further probe the internal microstucture of surfactant systems. New commercial and research developments are briefly discussed in the following sections. 

Twelve patients with peptic ulcers treated with aloe gel emulsion and "as needed" Pro-Banthine showed a clinical recovery and no relapse 1 yr later (Blitz et al., 1963). The results of this study are controversial, as researchers did not... 

Microwaves should be well suited for continuous tubular reactors, where they might reduce the amount of energy needed, reduce costs, and increase the output of a plant. If water were inert, it might be used to absorb the microwave radiation, the reagents being in solution or in an emulsion. Further research will undoubtedly find many more applications for this technique. 

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