scholarly journals The formation of emulsions in definable fields of flow

The physical and chemical condition of emulsions of two fluids which do not mix has been the subject of many studies, but very little seems to be known about the mechanics of the stirring processes which are used in making them. The conditions which govern the breaking up of a jet of one fluid projected into another have been studied by Rayleigh and others, but most of these studies have been concerned with the effect of surface tension or dynamical forces in making a cylindrical thread unstable so that it breaks into drops. The mode of formation of the cylindrical thread has not been discussed. As a rule in experimental work it has been formed by projecting one liquid into the other under pressure through a hole. It seems that studies of this kind which neglect the disruptive effect of the viscous drag of one fluid on the other, though interesting in themselves, tell us very little about the manner in which two liquids can be stirred together to form an emulsion. When one liquid is at rest in another liquid of the same density it assumes the form of a spherical drop. Any movement of the out er fluid (apart from pure rotation or translation) will distort the drop owing to the dynamical and viscous forces which then act on its surface. Surface tension, however, will tend to keep the drop spherical. When the drop is very small, or the liquid very viscous, the stresses due to inertia will be small compared with those due to viscosity.

1977 ◽  
Vol 1977 (1) ◽  
pp. 381-385 ◽  
Author(s):  
D. Cormack ◽  
J.A. Nichols

ABSTRACT Results are presented on the factors relating to the dissipation of oil spills at sea, including evaporation, emulsion formation, spreading, and natural dispersion into the water column. For Ekofisk oil, 20% evaporates in about 7.5 hours and, while emulsion formation is as rapid as for Kuwait crude, the resulting viscosity is low and insufficient to allow interference with the natural spreading and dispersion rates. Spreading has two components. One is controlled by surface tension-viscous drag forces and the other is wind-induced. Together they contribute to the two dimensional dissipation of the oil so that subsequent oil concentrations in the sea are of necessity, low. These concentrations were measured for naturally dispersing and chemically dispersed slicks. The chemically-dispersed slicks were of two kinds. One was previously weathered for three hours, the other was of controlled thickness and was dispersed immediately upon being laid. Resulting concentrations of oil in the sea are low and of short duration compared with those required to give observable effects in laboratory toxicity studies. No significant deleterious effects were found to result from the dispersion of oil slicks at sea using low toxicity dispersant chemicals; also it was noted that, in any case, substantial quantities of oil can be expected to enter the sea before oil recovery operations can be mounted.


1—The dynamical theory of the instability of a long cylindrical column of an incompressible perfect liquid under the action of capillary force has been given by Rayleigh, neglecting the effect of the surrounding fluid. According to his results, if the column becomes varicose with wave-length λ , the equilibrium of the column is unstable, provided λ exceed the circumference 2π a of the cylinder, in accordance with the result of Plateau’s statical theory; and the degree of instability, as indicated by the value of q in the exponential e qt to which the motion is assumed to be proportional, depends upon the value of λ reaching a maximum when λ = 4.51 × 2 a . The case of a long cylindrical column of an incompressible viscous liquid has also been discussed by Rayleigh, again leaving out of consideration the effect of the surrounding fluid. Assuming the viscosity to be very great compared with the inertia and neglecting the effect of the latter, he has shown that for a very viscous liquid column the maximum instability occurs when the wave-length of the varicosity is very large in comparison with the radius of the cylinder, i. e ., when λ = ∞ theoretically. Quite recently G. I. Taylor has made interesting experimental researches, together with some theoretical investigations, upon the mode of formation of the cylindrical thread by the disruptive effect of the viscous drag of one fluid on the other, by putting a small drop of a viscous liquid in definable shearing fields of flow of another viscous liquid. He has thus thrown much light upon the mechanism of the formation of emulsions. In the course of his experiments he observed an interesting phenomenon, in one case when the ratio of the viscosity of the liquid forming the thread to that of the surrounding liquid is 0.91, that after the apparatus which was used to produce the field of flow was stopped the final thread gradually broke up into a number of small drops spaced at nearly regular intervals, although it had seemed quite stable while the apparatus was in motion. In connection with this interesting phenomenon, Professor G. I. Taylor kindly suggested to the writer a problem of investigating the character of the equilibrium of a long cylindrical thread of a viscous liquid surrounded by an­other viscous fluid under the action of interfacial surface tension as well as under the effect of viscous forces acting on the liquid inside the column by the surrounding viscous fluid. The effect of the latter is expected to play some important role in the phenomenon under con­sideration, although, as mentioned already, its effect had been neglected by Rayleigh in his investigation.


1—In a previous papers the present writer has discussed the instability of a long cylindrical column of an incompressible viscous liquid surrounded by another viscous fluid under the action of both surface tension and viscous forces. In this work the fluids were at rest except for the small disturbances which were assumed to develop slowly. It was shown that if the ratio of viscosities of the two fluids is neither zero nor infinity the maximum instability always occurs at a certain definite value of the wavelength of the assumed initial varicosity so that the formation of drops of definite size would be expected. A comparison of the theory with observation has also been made and satisfactorily good agreement between them was found. Now, in his experimental studies on the mode of formation of a cylindrical thread from a drop of a viscous liquid by the disruptive effect of the viscous drags of a surrounding liquid, professor G. I. Taylor observed that when a drop of black lubricating oil was surrounded by syrup, the thread formed by pulling out the drop did not at once break up into small drops but remained cylindrical for some time and finally broke up into small drops, the diameters of which were about 1/10th of the diameter of the original drop. On the other band, if as soon as the cylindrical thread was formed the apparatus was stopped the thread immediately began to break up in the manner described above. Thus, if the apparatus were kept going very much smaller drops were formed than if it were stopped as soon as the initial drop bad been pulled out into a cylindrical thread.


Author(s):  
K. T. Tokuyasu

During the past investigations of immunoferritin localization of intracellular antigens in ultrathin frozen sections, we found that the degree of negative staining required to delineate u1trastructural details was often too dense for the recognition of ferritin particles. The quality of positive staining of ultrathin frozen sections, on the other hand, has generally been far inferior to that attainable in conventional plastic embedded sections, particularly in the definition of membranes. As we discussed before, a main cause of this difficulty seemed to be the vulnerability of frozen sections to the damaging effects of air-water surface tension at the time of drying of the sections.Indeed, we found that the quality of positive staining is greatly improved when positively stained frozen sections are protected against the effects of surface tension by embedding them in thin layers of mechanically stable materials at the time of drying (unpublished).


2000 ◽  
Vol 406 ◽  
pp. 337-346 ◽  
Author(s):  
L. ENGEVIK

The instabilities of a free surface shear flow are considered, with special emphasis on the shear flow with the velocity profile U* = U*0sech2 (by*). This velocity profile, which is found to model very well the shear flow in the wake of a hydrofoil, has been focused on in previous studies, for instance by Dimas & Triantyfallou who made a purely numerical investigation of this problem, and by Longuet-Higgins who simplified the problem by approximating the velocity profile with a piecewise-linear profile to make it amenable to an analytical treatment. However, none has so far recognized that this problem in fact has a very simple solution which can be found analytically; that is, the stability boundaries, i.e. the boundaries between the stable and the unstable regions in the wavenumber (k)–Froude number (F)-plane, are given by simple algebraic equations in k and F. This applies also when surface tension is included. With no surface tension present there exist two distinct regimes of unstable waves for all values of the Froude number F > 0. If 0 < F [Lt ] 1, then one of the regimes is given by 0 < k < (1 − F2/6), the other by F−2 < k < 9F−2, which is a very extended region on the k-axis. When F [Gt ] 1 there is one small unstable region close to k = 0, i.e. 0 < k < 9/(4F2), the other unstable region being (3/2)1/2F−1 < k < 2 + 27/(8F2). When surface tension is included there may be one, two or even three distinct regimes of unstable modes depending on the value of the Froude number. For small F there is only one instability region, for intermediate values of F there are two regimes of unstable modes, and when F is large enough there are three distinct instability regions.


1990 ◽  
Vol 69 (1) ◽  
pp. 74-85 ◽  
Author(s):  
D. P. Gaver ◽  
R. W. Samsel ◽  
J. Solway

We studied airway opening in a benchtop model intended to mimic bronchial walls held in apposition by airway lining fluid. We measured the relationship between the airway opening velocity (U) and the applied airway opening pressure in thin-walled polyethylene tubes of different radii (R) using lining fluids of different surface tensions (gamma) and viscosities (mu). Axial wall tension (T) was applied to modify the apparent wall compliance characteristics, and the lining film thickness (H) was varied. Increasing mu or gamma or decreasing R or T led to an increase in the airway opening pressures. The effect of H depended on T: when T was small, opening pressures increased slightly as H was decreased; when T was large, opening pressure was independent of H. Using dimensional analysis, we found that the relative importance of viscous and surface tension forces depends on the capillary number (Ca = microU/gamma). When Ca is small, the opening pressure is approximately 8 gamma/R and acts as an apparent “yield pressure” that must be exceeded before airway opening can begin. When Ca is large (Ca greater than 0.5), viscous forces add appreciably to the overall opening pressures. Based on these results, predictions of airway opening times suggest that airway closure can persist through a considerable portion of inspiration when lining fluid viscosity or surface tension are elevated.


2005 ◽  
Vol 47 (2) ◽  
pp. 185-202 ◽  
Author(s):  
T. E. Stokes ◽  
G. C. Hocking ◽  
L. K. Forbes

AbstractThe unsteady axisymmetric withdrawal from a fluid with a free surface through a point sink is considered. Results both with and without surface tension are included and placed in context with previous work. The results indicate that there are two critical values of withdrawal rate at which the surface is drawn directly into the outlet, one after flow initiation and the other after the flow has been established. It is shown that the larger of these values corresponds to the point at which steady solutions no longer exist.


Author(s):  
Francisco J. Arias ◽  
Salvador A. De Las Heras

Abstract In this work, consideration is given to capillary convection on ferrofluids from the concentration gradient induced when a nonhomogeneous magnetic field is applied. It is known that mass transfer along an interface between two fluids can appear due to a gradient of the surface tension in the so-called Marangoni effect (or Gibbs–Marangoni effect). Because the surface tension is both thermal and concentration dependent, Marangoni convection can be induced by either a thermal or a concentration gradient, where in the former case, it is generally referred as thermocapillary convection. Now, it has been theoretically and experimentally demonstrated that a ferrofluid under the action of a non-homogeneous magnetic field can induce a concentration gradient of suspended magnetic nanoparticles, and also the effect of Fe3O4 nanoparticles on the surface tension has been measured. Therefore, by deductive reasoning and taking into account the above mentioned facts, it is permissible to infer ferrohydrodynamic capillary convection on magnetic fluids under the presence of a magnetic gradient field. Utilizing a simplified physical model, the phenomenon was investigated and it was found that ferrohydrodynamic-Marangoni convection could be induced with particle size in the range up to 10 nm, which is the range of magnetic fluids to escape magnetic agglomeration.


1934 ◽  
Vol 30 (2) ◽  
pp. 216-224
Author(s):  
P. C. Ho

Owing to its physical and chemical properties being greatly different from those of any of the liquids which have hitherto been used in the Wilson cloud chamber, mercury has been used in the experiments described in this paper and the condensation phenomena of its vapour at different temperatures observed. Before constructing the apparatus it was considered necessary to get from theoretical considerations some idea about the magnitude of the critical supersaturation for mercury vapour in equilibrium with a drop carrying unit charge. Assuming that J. J. Thomson's formula.where s is the supersaturation of mercury vapour in equilibrium with a drop of mercury of radius a, charge e, density σ and surface tension T, the value of which is assumed here to be independent of the radius of the drop, K the specific inductive capacity of the dielectric surrounding the drop, and R the gas constant for one gramme of weight, all at temperature θ, can be applied to the present problem, this critical supersaturation sm is given by the formula


2014 ◽  
Vol 6 (0) ◽  
Author(s):  
Rahul Banerjee ◽  
S. Kanjilal
Keyword(s):  

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