Surfactant, Water, Proton-Donating Material, and Hydrocarbon Quaternary Systems

Ionic Surfactant, Water, Proton-Donating Material, and Hydrocarbon Quaternary Systems 

The solubility of an oil such as decane in the micellar isotropic solution LI or in the reverse micellar isotropic solution L2 can be very important. LI leads to w/o 

8 (a) Typical ternary phase diagram of water, an amphiphile (sodium octanoate), 

The term microemulsion to describe such systems is not well chosen it conveys the idea of an actual emulsion characterized by submicrometer (below 0.1 tun) droplets. As is well known, an emulsion is not thermodynamically stable and cannot be represented by a single-phase domain in a thermodynamic phase diagram. The so-called microemulsions must be considered as real micellar solutions containing oil in addition to water and surfactants. These solutions, although very far from ideal in the thermodynamic sense, are nevertheless always real in the thermodynamic sense. Another important difference between microemulsions and emulsions is that, in general, a microemulsion requires significantly more surfactant than an emulsion. 

These w/o microemulsions exhibit other important characteristics  

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