Abstract:
A remarkable property of inverse water-hydrocarbon emulsions, which is manifested during their flow in microchannels, has been discovered and called dynamic blocking. According to this phenomenon, the flow of emulsion through a microchannel ceases with the time despite the presence of a continuously applied pressure gradient. Experiments show that this effect can be observed for the flow of emulsions with different compositions and rheological properties. The effect is manifested at rather significant pressure gradients, although it is accompanied by a partial degradation of dispersions. A physical mechanism is proposed to explain the dynamic blocking of water-hydrocarbon emulsions in microchannels, which is based on the notion of an interaction between nanodimensional surface shells consisting of surfactant molecules that surround water microdrops.
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