Rheology of Highly Concentrated Emulsions – Concentration and Droplet Size Dependencies

The concentration and size dependencies of elastic properties of highly concentrated w/o emulsions were studied. The range of weight concentration of the disperse phase was 90 - 96%, the range of the average droplet size was 16 - 20 mm, and the droplet size distribution remained unchanged. The disperse phase consists of droplets of over-cooled concentrated aqueous solutions of inorganic salts. The concentration range being studied lies above the limit of maximal close packing, j > jm. The droplet size distribution is fairly wide and the shape of droplets is polygonal. These factors alone determine possible new rheological effects, such as the elasticity and visco-plastic behaviour of emulsions, as well as the observed form of concentration and size dependencies of rheological properties of emulsions. The complete flow curves were measured for these fairly new emulsion systems. It emerged that they were similar to the entire concentration and droplet size ranges being studied. The concentration dependencies of the yield stress and storage modules corresponded to the Princen-Kiss theory with critical volume concentration approximately 0.71 - 0.74. However, this theory describes the size dependence of elastic modules incorrectly. A new model is proposed, which correctly describes the dependencies of elastic modules on both determining parameters - those of concentration and droplet size.