Ultrastable Particle‐Stabilized Foams

Abstract

Pump up the volume: Wet foams prepared with surfactants are thermodynamically unstable systems that undergo rapid disproportionation, drainage, and coalescence. Ultrastable foams have now been prepared using colloidal particles as stabilizers (left picture). The stabilization results from the irreversible adsorption at the air–water interface of particles surface‐modified with short‐chain amphiphiles (right picture).

Influence of the contact angle of silica nanoparticles at the air–water interface on the mechanical properties of the layers composed of these particles

“…This armour has been observed in many experiments, on single bubbles [14,15] or on three-dimensional foams [1,3,5].…”

“…It is now well known that aqueous foams can be stabilized solely by partially hydrophobic particles of nano-or micrometer size [1][2][3][4][5]. They are the analogue of Pickering emulsions [6,7], which were discovered at the beginning of the 20 th century.…”

Enhanced oil recovery by nonionic surfactants considering micellization, surface, and foaming properties

“…The common procedures of foam preparation include shaking (Aronson 1986;Alargova et al 2004;Binks and Tommy 2005;Dickinson et al 2004;Dippenaar et al 1978;Dippenaar 1982a, b;Frye and Berg 1989;Garrett 1979;Garrett et al 2006), bubbling (Frye and Berg 1989;Kulkarni et al 1977;Johansson and Pugh 1992;Pugh 2005;Vijayaraghavan et al 2006), bubbling and shaking (Frye and Berg 1989), bubbling and stirring (Aktas et al 2008;Johansson and Pugh 1992;Schwarz and Grano 2005), and sudden drop in pressure (Dickinson et al 2004;Kostakis et al 2006). It was established that the particle hydrophobicity (Aktas et al 2008;Du et al 2003;Horozov 2008;Hunter et al 2008), size (Aktas et al 2008;Ata 2008;Dippenaar 1982a, b;Frye and Berg 1989;Binks and Tommy 2005), and concentration (Dippenaar 1982a, b;Gonzenbach et al 2006;Zhang et al 2008) affect the foam stability. For foam flooding, the foamability and foam stability tests are one of the major laboratory steps for the EOR method.…”

An ellipsometry study of silica nanoparticle layers at the water surface

“…20 Partially hydrophobic nanoparticles are interesting model systems for studying the stability of emulsions and foams. [21][22][23][24][25][26][27] They can be either spread or adsorbed at the interfaces from aqueous dispersions. The properties of both types of layers have been investigated in the case of silica nanoparticles and it was shown that stable foams could be produced when E > /2, E being the surface compression elastic modulus and  the surface tension (Gibbs stability criterion).…”