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Title: A growing-drop technique for measuring dynamic interfacial tension

Technical Report ·
DOI:https://doi.org/10.2172/10192749· OSTI ID:10192749

A novel, growing-drop technique is described for measuring dynamic interfacial tension due to sorption of surface-active solutes. The proposed method relates the instantaneous pressure and size of expanding liquid drops to interfacial tension and is useful for measuring both liquid/gas and liquid/liquid tensions over a wide range of time scales, currently from 10 ms to several hours. Growing-drop measurements on surfactant-free water/air and water/octanol interfaces yield constant tensions equal to their known literature values. For surfactant-laden, liquid drops, the growing-drop technique captures the actual transient tension evolution of a single interface, rather than interval times as with the classic maximum-drop-pressure and drop.-volume tension measurements. Dynamic tensions measured for 0.25 mM aqueous 1-decanol solution/air and 0.02 kg/m{sup 3} aqueous Triton X-100 solution/dodecane interfaces show nonmonotonic behavior, indicating slow surfactant transport relative to the imposed rates of interfacial dilatation. The dynamic tension of a purified and fresh 6 mM aqueous sodium dodecyl sulfate (SDS) solution/air interface shows only a monotonic decrease, indicating rapid surfactant transport relative to the imposed rates of dilatation. ConverselY, an aged SDS solution, naturally containing trace dodecanol impurities, exhibits dynamic tensions which reflect a superposition of the rapidly equilibrating SDS and the slowly adsorbing dodecanol.

Research Organization:
Lawrence Berkeley National Lab. (LBNL), Berkeley, CA (United States)
Sponsoring Organization:
USDOE, Washington, DC (United States)
DOE Contract Number:
AC03-76SF00098
OSTI ID:
10192749
Report Number(s):
DOE/BC-94000102; ON: DE94000102
Resource Relation:
Other Information: PBD: Oct 1993
Country of Publication:
United States
Language:
English

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