Effects of Temperature on the Emulsification in Surfactant-Water-Oil Systems

The effect of temperature on the emulsification has been investigated by discontinuous molecular dynamic simulation. When a large oil drop is put in water, on one hand the mixing entropy makes it divide into small oil drops; on the other hand the interactions among particles drives the small oil drops fowards aggregation. The evolution of the mean size of oil drops obeys the exponential delay law. There exist an active temperature, at which, the addition of surfactants has obvious effect on the emulsification. The surfactants with low HLB value (e.g. H 1 T 3) make the dispersity of emulsion decrease, and the surfactants with high HLB value (e.g. H 2 T 2 and H 3 T 1) make a contribution to increase the dispersity of emulsion.