THE EFFECT OF ALCOHOLS WITH DIFFERENT STRUCTURES ON THE FORMATION OF WARM O W MICROEMULSIONS/

The influence of twenty five different alcohols on the formation of wa rm oil-in-water (O/W) microemulsions was investigated. Selected concen trations of each alcohol were added to fixed amounts of stearic acid, Tween 20 and water at 65 degrees C. Fifteen alcohols formed microemuls ions, at least at one of the concentrations. A pattern recognition stu dy was performed to elucidate the activities of the alcohols by Princi pal Component Analysis (PCA). Linear Discriminant Analysis (LDA) was u sed to classify them. Two classification functions, obtained for alcoh ols forming/not forming microemulsions, suggest that the formation of warm O/W microemulsion is linked to the nature and the dimension/lipop hilicity of the alcohol.