Interfacial tension-time

For example, the solid can swell in contact with a certain liquid or even interact by chemical interfacial reactions it can also be partially dissolved. In the case of polymer surfaces, the molecular reorientation in the surface region under the influence of the liquid phase is assumed to be a major cause of hysteresis. This reorientation or restructuring is thermodynamically favoured at the polymer-air interface, the polar groups are buried away from the air phase, thus causing a lower solid-vapour interfacial tension. In contact with a sessile water drop, the polar groups turn over to achieve a lower solid-liquid interfacial tension. Time-dependent changes in contact angles can also be observed (33). 

Fig. 11-13. Apparatus for measuring the time dependence of interfacial tension (from Ref. 34). The air and aspirator connections allow for establishing the desired level of ftesh surface. IV denotes the Wilhelmy slide, suspended from a Cahn electrobalance with a recorder output.

Surface Tension. Interfacial surface tension between fluid and filter media is considered to play a role in the adhesion of blood cells to synthetic fibers. Interfacial tension is a result of the interaction between the surface tension of the fluid and the filter media. Direct experimental evidence has shown that varying this interfacial tension influences the adhesion of blood cells to biomaterials. The viscosity of the blood product is important in the shear forces of the fluid to the attached cells viscosity of a red cell concentrate is at least 500 times that of a platelet concentrate. This has a considerable effect on the shear and flow rates through the filter. The surface stickiness plays a role in the critical shear force for detachment of adhered blood cells. 

Single-Bubble Regime Bubbles are produced one at a time, their size being determined primarily by the orifice diameter d, the interfacial tension of the gasdiquid film C, the densities of the liquid Pl and gas Pc, and the gravitational acceleration g according to the relation... 

Even if the interfacial tension is measured accurately, there may be doubt about its applicability to the surface of bubbles being rapidly formed in a solution of a surface-active agent, for the bubble surface may not have time to become equihbrated with the solution. Coppock and Meiklejohn [Trans. Instn. Chem. Engrs., 29, 75 (1951)] reported that bubbles formed in the single-bubble regime at an orifice in a solution of a commercial detergent had a diameter larger than that calculated in terms of the measured surface tension of the solution [Eq. (14-206)]. The disparity is probably a reflection of unequihbrated bubble laminae. 

Induction period measurements can also be used to determine interfacial tensions. To validate the values inferred, however, it is necessary to compare the results with an independent source. Hurley etal. (1995) achieved this for Cyanazine using a dynamic contact angle analyser (Calm DCA312). Solid-liquid interfacial tensions estimated from contact angle measurements were in the range 5-12 mJ/m which showed closest agreement with values (4—20mJ/m ) obtained from the log-log plots of induction time versus supersaturation based on the assumption of — tg. 

These are molecules which contain both hydrophilic and hydrophobic units (usually one or several hydrocarbon chains), such that they love and hate water at the same time. Familiar examples are lipids and alcohols. The effect of amphiphiles on interfaces between water and nonpolar phases can be quite dramatic. For example, tiny additions of good amphiphiles reduce the interfacial tension by several orders of magnitude. Amphiphiles are thus very efficient in promoting the dispersion of organic fluids in water and vice versa. Added in larger amounts, they associate into a variety of structures, filhng the material with internal interfaces which shield the oil molecules—or in the absence of oil the hydrophobic parts of the amphiphiles—from the water [3]. Some of the possible structures are depicted in Fig. 1. A very rich phase... 

The phase separation process at late times t is usually governed by a law of the type R t) oc f, where R t) is the characteristic domain size at time t, and n an exponent which depends on the universality class of the model and on the conservation laws in the dynamics. At the presence of amphiphiles, however, the situation is somewhat complicated by the fact that the amphiphiles aggregate at the interfaces and reduce the interfacial tension during the coarsening process, i.e., the interfacial tension depends on the time. This leads to a pronounced slowing down at late times. In order to quantify this effect, Laradji et al. [217,222] have proposed the scaling ansatz... 

The diffusion current Id depends upon several factors, such as temperature, the viscosity of the medium, the composition of the base electrolyte, the molecular or ionic state of the electro-active species, the dimensions of the capillary, and the pressure on the dropping mercury. The temperature coefficient is about 1.5-2 per cent °C 1 precise measurements of the diffusion current require temperature control to about 0.2 °C, which is generally achieved by immersing the cell in a water thermostat (preferably at 25 °C). A metal ion complex usually yields a different diffusion current from the simple (hydrated) metal ion. The drop time t depends largely upon the pressure on the dropping mercury and to a smaller extent upon the interfacial tension at the mercury-solution interface the latter is dependent upon the potential of the electrode. Fortunately t appears only as the sixth root in the Ilkovib equation, so that variation in this quantity will have a relatively small effect upon the diffusion current. The product m2/3 t1/6 is important because it permits results with different capillaries under otherwise identical conditions to be compared the ratio of the diffusion currents is simply the ratio of the m2/3 r1/6 values. 

For long-chain alcohol esters it is interesting to see that the interfacial tension between a 0.01 wt % aqueous solution and octane or xylene has a minimum for ester sulfonates with a total 22 carbon atoms in the fatty acid chain and the ester chain [60]. The balance in length between the two chains has only a poor effect. Thus, a-sulfonated fatty acid esters with a total number of 22-26 carbon atoms in the molecule have excellent interfacial activities. To attain the same magnitude in the interfacial tension between linear alkylbenzenesulfonate (LAS) solution and octane, the required concentration of LAS is 0.1 wt %. This is 10 times the concentration needed for a-sulfonated fatty acid esters [60]. 

The ratio (p/G) has the units of time and is known as the elastic time constant, te, of the material. Little information exists in the published literature on the rheomechanical parameters, p, and G for biomaterials. An exception is red blood cells for which the shear modulus of elasticity and viscosity have been measured by using micro-pipette techniques 166,68,70,72]. The shear modulus of elasticity data is usually given in units of N m and is sometimes compared with the interfacial tension of liquids. However, these properties are not the same. Interfacial tension originates from an imbalance of surface forces whereas the shear modulus of elasticity is an interaction force closely related to the slope of the force-distance plot (Fig. 3). Typical reported values of the shear modulus of elasticity and viscosity of red blood cells are 6 x 10 N m and 10 Pa s respectively 1701. Red blood cells typically have a mean length scale of the order of 7 pm, thus G is of the order of 10 N m and the elastic time constant (p/G) is of the order of 10 s. 

Demulsifiers (specifically, oil spill demulsifiers) can be applied to oil spills in low concentrations. They prevent mousse formation for significant periods of time and cause a large reduction in oil-water interfacial tension. The best of these was found to prevent emulsification at dosages as low as 1 part inhibitor to 20,000 parts of fresh oil at 20° C [273]. At dosages of 1 1000, at temperatures higher than 10° C, the chemical also results in significant and rapid dispersion of the oil. For very low temperatures or highly weathered oil, the performance of the chemical falls off sharply. 

The effectiveness of a crude oil demulsifier is correlated with the lowering of the shear viscosity and the dynamic tension gradient of the oil-water interface. The interfacial tension relaxation occurs faster with an effective demulsifier [1714]. Short relaxation times imply that interfacial tension gradients at slow film thinning are suppressed. Electron spin resonance experiments with labeled demulsifiers indicate that the demulsifiers form reverse micellelike clusters in the bulk oil [1275]. The slow unclustering of the demulsifier at the interface appears to be the rate-determining step in the tension relaxation process. 

The molecular collective behavior of surfactant molecules has been analyzed using the time courses of capillary wave frequency after injection of surfactant aqueous solution onto the liquid-liquid interface [5,8]. Typical power spectra for capillary waves excited at the water-nitrobenzene interface are shown in Fig. 3 (a) without CTAB (cetyltrimethy-lammonium bromide) molecules, and (b) 10 s after the injection of CTAB solution to the water phase [5]. The peak appearing around 10-13 kHz represents the beat frequency, i.e., the capillary wave frequency. The peak of the capillary wave frequency shifts from 12.5 to 10.0kHz on the injection of CTAB solution. This is due to the decrease in interfacial tension caused by the increased number density of surfactant molecules at the interface. Time courses of capillary wave frequency after the injection of different CTAB concentrations into the aqueous phase are reproduced in Fig. 4. An anomalous temporary decrease in capillary wave frequency is observed when the CTAB solution beyond the CMC (critical micelle concentration) was injected. The capillary wave frequency decreases rapidly on injection, and after attaining its minimum value, it increases... 

The dependence of the interfacial tension at the W/NB interface on the interfacial potential difference [29,30] was investigated by using an aqueous solution dropping electrode [26,31]. In this investigation, the aqueous solution was forced upward dropwise in NB and the drop time of W was measured as a function of potential difference applied at the W/ NB interface. When W contained 1 MMgS04 and NB contained 4 x 10 " M Cs" TPhB ... 

When using any solvent extraction system, one of the most important decisions is the selection of the solvent to be used. The properties which should be considered when choosing the appropriate solvent are selectivity distribution coefficients insolubility recoverability density interfacial tension chemical reactivity viscosity vapour pressure freezing point safety and cost. A balance must be obtained between the efficiency of extraction (the yield), the stability of the additive under the extraction conditions, the (instrumental and analyst) time required and cost of the equipment. Once extracted the functionality is lost and... 

The oil-water dynamic interfacial tensions are measured by the pulsed drop (4) technique. The experimental equipment consists of a syringe pump to pump oil, with the demulsifier dissolved in it, through a capillary tip in a thermostated glass cell containing brine or water. The interfacial tension is calculated by measuring the pressure inside a small oil drop formed at the tip of the capillary. In this technique, the syringe pump is stopped at the maximum bubble pressure and the oil-water interface is allowed to expand rapidly till the oil comes out to form a small drop at the capillary tip. Because of the sudden expansion, the interface is initially at a nonequilibrium state. As it approaches equilibrium, the pressure, AP(t), inside the drop decays. The excess pressure is continuously measured by a sensitive pressure transducer. The dynamic tension at time t, is calculated from the Young-Laplace equation... 

The results show that although all the demulsifiers lower the shear viscosity, they differ widely in their demulsification effectiveness, as measured by the residual bottom sediment and water content (Figure 1) (BS and W%) of the dehydrated oil. For example, the demulsifier 0P1, although it lowers both the equilibrium interfacial tension (Figure 2) and the shear viscosity (Table I), nevertheless is ineffective. This is because it takes a much longer time for the oil-water interfacial tension to reach equilibrium with 0P1 than with PI or P2 (see later). 

Figure 4c shows that the amount of adsorbed proteins is rapidly saturated within several minutes of exposing serum-containing medium to a surface. Albumin, the most abundant serum protein, was expected to preferentially adsorb onto the surfaces during early time points. Then, adsorbed albumin was expected to be displaced by cell adhesion proteins. To investigate the effect of preadsorbed albumin displacement on cell adhesion, SAMs were first exposed to albumin then, HUVECs suspended in a serum-supplemented medium were added [21, 42]. Very few cells adhered to hydrophobic SAMs that had been pretreated with albumin, due to the large interfacial tension between water and the hydrophobic surfactant-like surface. Albumin was infrequently displaced by the cell adhesive proteins Fn and Vn. One the other hand, HUVECs adhered well to hydrophilic SAM surfaces that had been preadsorbed with albumin. In that case, the preadsorbed albumin was readily displaced by cell adhesive proteins. 

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