Use of microfluidic devices to evaluate emulsion stability

Abstract

Emulsions stability is an essential attribute in the food and pharmaceutical industries, determining their application and evaluating the efficiency of compounds used to stabilize these emulsions. Therefore an emulsion stability analyzer could be used to determine both emulsifiers concentration and conditions of stability along time in order to achieve high stability. An emulsion stability analyzer could be also useful considering in-line approaches to enhance oil recovery of crude oil and nonpolar molecules obtained from fermentative microbial production in industrial biotechnology, since both processes can generate undesirable stable emulsions. Breaking emulsions (from both fermentation and crude oil processes) is currently performed by demulsifiers addition, which is usually costly and non-ecofriendly. In addition there are no efficient tools that enable a systematic characterization of the properties of multiphase systems during oil production. In these processes the prediction of emulsion stability throughout time is crucial aiming the lowest kinetic stability as well as to define optimized destabilization conditions. In this context the aim of this project is to understand the mechanisms of emulsion (de)stabilization within microfluidics devices for determination of emulsions stability not only considering their application in food and pharmaceutical industries but also aiming tailored, cost-effective oil recovery. For this, we propose a novel strategy based on last developments in microfluidics for studying droplet formation and coalescence. Designing of different channels will be evaluated to obtain an efficient phases separation. Thus, we aim at further advancing the microfluidics technology to be used as (de)stabilizer of emulsions in order to further implementation as an in-line emulsion characterization device. (AU)