Salinity middle point

The landlocked Caspian Sea is the largest inland body of water on Earth. Surrounded by Azerbaijan, Iran, Kazakhstan, Russia, and Turkmenistan, the Caspian Sea is home to myriad ecosystems. At the meeting point of the Middle East, Europe, and Asia, the Caspian region includes steppe land in the north, cold, continental deserts and semi-deserts in the northeast and east, and warmer mountain and highland systems in the south and southwest. The coastal wetlands of the Caspian basin include many shallow, saline pools, which attract a variety of bird life and biodiversity over 400 species are unique to the Caspian. In addition, the sea s native sturgeon is famous the world around for the roe it produces sturgeon from the Caspian Sea accounts for approximately 90% of the world s caviar industry. 

In a type 111 system, a left lobe or right lobe microemulsion cannot coexist with the middle-phase microemulsion. The total composition determines the existence of a lobe or the middle-phase microemulsion. Gary A. Pope (Personal communication on Febraary 17, 2009) pointed out that, as a practical matter, we rarely measure a sufficient number of points in the ternary system to clearly define two-phase and three-phase regions. When cosolvent and/or Ca is used, or when soap forms, a ternary diagram does not accurately represent the phase behavior. When typical salinity scans at WOR = 1 and a low surfactant concentration are performed, almost aU the cases in a type III environment will be three phases. So there is little, if any, practical issue involved in a typical phase behavior experiment. 

While the middle-phase microemulsion appears at a discrete point in the temperature or salinity scan, system properties change continuously through the scan. As illustrated in Fig. 13. the interfacial tension decreases... 

At low salinity a type I phase behavior is observed, and at high salinity a type II. In the middle of the scan, type III phase behavior presents a surfactant-rich microemulsion middle phase in equilibrium with both water and oil excess phases. One of the type III tubes (here percent NaCl = 2.8) exhibits a microemulsion that contains exactly the same amounts of cosolubilized oil and water. This phase is represented by a point that is equidistant from... 

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