STABILITY OF EMULSIONS UNDER STATIC AND DYNAMIC CONDITIONS

We present theoretical treatment and experimental data on the factors of stabilisation within emulsion systems. First a brief description of the hydrodynamic theory of thinning of emulsion films in the presence of surfactants is provided. This theory could be applied to explain t he empirical Bancroft rule and some effects related to the HLB scale o f surfactants. Complimentary experimental methods for investigating of model emulsions films, drops and batch systems are described. An over view of our experimental data on the behavior of emulsions stabilised with non-ionic surfactants and proteins is provided. Attention is then turned to two recently uncovered phenomena of stabilisation of emulsi on films, arising from surfactant re-distribution between the phases.