Adsorption behavior of weak hydrophilic substances on low-energy surface in aqueous medium

Wetting behavior and mechanism of wetting agents on low-energy surface

“…Similar to weak hydrophilic substances [12], the Lifshitz-van der Waals force between wetting agent and polymer is attractive. Although the Lifshitz-van der Waals attractive is very weak, it provides probability for wetting agents approaching to surface of polymer.…”

“…Calculation of surface energy and interfacial free energy are demonstrated in our previous paper in detail [12,19].…”

“…Based on the surface energy parameters of polymer resins and post-consumer plastics described in our previous paper [12], interfacial free energy between wetting agent and the involved materials was calculated, and the results are shown in Table 2.…”

“…In terms of plastics flotation, which has been a subject of a considerable number of researches in recent years [5,6,11], wetting behavior of flotation reagents on LES plays a central role in this field. Adsorption behavior of weak hydrophilic substances on LES in aqueous medium was reported, and some interesting conclusions were achieved, which provides insights into theoretical understanding of wetting mechanism [12].…”

“…Some strong hydrophilic substances such as Calcium lignosulphonate, Tannic acid, Methylcellulose and Triton X-100, have been used as wetting agents in flotation [12][13][14][15]. Wetting action can be achieved by adsorption of wetting agents, but wetting mechanism of wetting agents still is a subject of considerable debate [11,13,16].…”