Remobilizing surfactant retarded fluid particle interfaces. I. Stress‐free conditions at the interfaces of micellar solutions of surfactants with fast sorption kinetics

Stebe, Kathleen J.; Lin, Shi‐Yow; Maldarelli, Charles

doi:doi:10.1063/1.857862

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Phys. Fluids A 3, 3 (1991); doi:10.1063/1.857862 (18 pages)

Remobilizing surfactant retarded fluid particle interfaces. I. Stress‐free conditions at the interfaces of micellar solutions of surfactants with fast sorption kinetics

Kathleen J. Stebe, Shi‐Yow Lin, and Charles Maldarelli

The Levich Institute, Department of Chemical Engineering, City College of New York, New York, New York 10031

(Received 25 October 1989; accepted 27 August 1990)

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Surfactant molecules adsorb onto the interfaces of moving fluid particles and are convected to regions in which the surface flow converges. Accumulation of surfactant in these regions creates interfacial tension gradients that retard the surface flow. In this study it is argued theoretically and demonstrated experimentally that fluid movement on the surface of a drop or bubble can remain unhindered in the presence of a single adsorbed surfactant if, relative to the convective rate of transport of adsorbed surfactant along the surface, desorption is fast, and the bulk concentration is high enough so that diffusion away from the particle is fast. For this circumstance, a uniform surface concentration of surfactant is maintained, and no gradients in surface tension arise to retard the surface velocity. The fluid particle flow behaves as it would in the absence of surfactant save that it has a reduced, uniform surface tension. The remobilization of surfactant‐laden interfaces of fluid particles is demonstrated experimentally in a three‐phase periodic slug flow in a capillary tube in which a train of alternating air and aqueous slugs ride on an annular wetting film of fluorocarbon oil. Surfactant, dissolved in the aqueous slug phase, adsorbs onto and retards the aqueous–oil interface. The hydrodynamics of this flow is such that small changes in the mobility of this interface create large shear rates in the oil layer. This significantly increases the pressure drop required to drive the slug train at constant velocity. Three surface adsorbers are used to demonstrate surface remobilization: The polyethoxy, nonionic surfactants Triton X‐100 and Brij‐35, which have fast desorption kinetics and do not retard the surface flow at high concentrations and, as a counter example, the desorption hindered protein bovine serum albumin, which is shown to be unable to remobilize an interface even at high concentration.