Reverse micelles measurements

The strong interactions between the water molecules also become obvious from NMR measurements by Tsujii et al..57) 13C-NMR experiments were used for determining the microviscosity of water in reversed micelles of dodecylammonium-propionate with 13C glycine cosolubilized. It was found that the apparent viscosity of the water-pool corresponds to the viscosity of a 78 % aqueous glycerol solution, obviously as a consequence of the extended network formation by strong hydrogen bonding. 

Sodium octanoate (NaO) forms reversed micelles not only in hydrocarbons but also in 1-hexanol/water. The hydration of the ionogenic NaO headgroups plays an important role in this case too. For this reason Fujii et al. 64) studied the dynamic behaviour of these headgroups and the influence of hydration-water with l3C and 23Na NMR measurements. Below w0 = [H20]/[NaO] 6 the 23Na line-width... 

Dynamic light-scattering experiments or the analysis of some physicochemical properties have shown that finite amounts of formamide, A-methylformamide, AA-dimethyl-formamide, ethylene glycol, glycerol, acetonitrile, methanol, and 1,2 propanediol can be entrapped within the micellar core of AOT-reversed micelles [33-36], The encapsulation of formamide and A-methylformamide nanoclusters in AOT-reversed micelles involves a significant breakage of the H-bond network characterizing their structure in the pure state. Moreover, from solvation dynamics measurements it was deduced that the intramicellar formamide is nearly completely immobilized [34,35],... 

Differential scanning calorimetry measurements have shown a marked cooling/heat-ing cycle hysteresis and that water entrapped in AOT-reversed micelles is only partially freezable. Moreover, the freezable fraction displays strong supercooling behavior as an effect of the very small size of the aqueous micellar core. The nonfreezable water fraction has been recognized as the water located at the water/surfactant interface engaged in solvation of the surfactant head groups [97,98]. 

The observation of slow, confined water motion in AOT reverse micelles is also supported by measured dielectric relaxation of the water pool. Using terahertz time-domain spectroscopy, the dielectric properties of water in the reverse micelles have been investigated by Mittleman et al. [36]. They found that both the time scale and amplitude of the relaxation was smaller than those of bulk water. They attributed these results to the reduction of long-range collective motion due to the confinement of the water in the nanometer-sized micelles. These results suggested that free water motion in the reverse micelles are not equivalent to bulk solvation dynamics. 

Investigation of water motion in AOT reverse micelles determining the solvent correlation function, C i), was first reported by Sarkar et al. [29]. They obtained time-resolved fluorescence measurements of C480 in an AOT reverse micellar solution with time resolution of > 50 ps and observed solvent relaxation rates with time constants ranging from 1.7 to 12 ns. They also attributed these dynamical changes to relaxation processes of water molecules in various environments of the water pool. In a similar study investigating the deuterium isotope effect on solvent motion in AOT reverse micelles. Das et al. [37] reported that the solvation dynamics of D2O is 1.5 times slower than H2O motion. 

Effectiveness of a crude oil demulsifier is correlated with the lowering of shear viscosity and dynamic tension gradient of the oil-water interface. Using the pulsed drop technique, the interfacial dilational modulii with different demulsifiers have been measured. The interfacial tension relaxation occurs faster with an effective demulsifier. Electron spin resonance with labeled demulsifiers indicate that the demulsifiers form reverse micelle like clusters in bulk oil. The slow unclustering of the demulsifier at the interface appears to be the rate determining step in the tension relaxation process. 

Critical Micelle Concentration (cmc) is the surfactant concentration below which the formation of reverse micelles does not occur, while the number of surfactant molecules per micelle is referred to as the aggregation number, n. The cmc is obtained through physical measurements, and varies from 0.1-1.0 mmol dm in water or the nonpolar solvents. 

The most commercially important mechanism of all is the kinetics of solute transfer from an aqueous to a reverse micelle phase. The kinetics of extraction of metal ions have not received the same research attention as the extraction capacity of W/O microemulsions. As the mechanism of extraction of metal ions is chemical, the effect of creating a microemulsion in an organic phase that contains the reactant can be measured experimentally. Results indicate that, as in the case of extraction equilibrium, the rate of extraction may increase substantially by the presence of the microemulsion as compared with the conventional system [20,38,44] or decrease it to... 

Many investigations have been undertaken regarding the effect of the water concentration in the microemulsion on the catalytic behaviour of enzymes. The surfactant concentration of the microemulsion defines the size of the internal interface but it often has no measurable influence on the enzyme kinetics. On the other hand, the physical properties of the water located inside the reverse micelles differ from those of bulk water, and the difference becomes progressively smaller as the water concentration, expressed in the w -value, increases. 

Caselli, M., Maestro, M., and Morea, G. (1988). A simplified model for protein inclusion in reverse micelles. SANS measurements as a control test. Biotech. Prog., 4,... 

Syntheses in reverse micelles induce formation of nanoparticles dispersed in the solution. This can be followed by measuring the absorption spectra of the colloi-... 

Three main effects are universal and do not depend on the system studied. The favorable effect of a cation on third-phase formation is measured by the slope of the energy of attraction between the reverse micelles plotted versus the cation concentration in the organic phase or the total nitrate concentration for different salt. Whatever the nature of the extracted cations, third-phase formation is observed when the energy of attraction is near 2kBT. Finally, the tendency toward phase splitting correlates well with the hydration enthalpy of the cations. 

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