Effect of Surfactant Concentration in the Emulsions on the Process of Oleophilic Porous Structures Imbibition

The spontaneous imbibition has been a subject of the scientific interest being a background process for numerous industrial technologies and occurring in the natural environment. In literature the experimental and theoretical results regarding this phenomenon describe a media imbibition with single-phase liquids and the relation between the process rate and media characteristics. The imbibition of oleophilic porous structures with two-phase liquids, only one phase of which was wetting, is an objective of the current publication. The main purpose is to estimate the influence of both surfactant fraction and the dispersed phase concentration on the mentioned process. The imbibition rate was investigated during model experiments with stabilized oil-in-water emulsions having the dispersed phase concentrations of 10 vol%, 30 vol% and 50 vol%. The prepared emulsions differed with fraction of the added surfactant, i.e. 1 vol%, 2 vol% and 5 vol%. The obtained results allowed to conclude that at the him≥0.02 m, the dispersed phase concentration and viscosity decreased versus height. However, the raise of the surfactant fraction caused the increase of mass and height of the imbibed emulsions in porous medium. Moreover, this provided increasing of viscosity and a change of emulsions behaviour as a liquid

The New Attempt at Modeling of the Three-Dimensional Geometry of the Epidermal Skin Layer and the Diffusion Processes of Nanomolecular Drug Carriers in Such Structures

Nanoparticles are presently considered the efficient carriers of medicals, cosmetics, and pharmaceuticals in the human organism. There is a lot of research carried out on the delivery of these materials in a non-invasive way. Such a method is very safe in times of global illnesses and pandemics. The most frequently investigated route is the approach to delivering nano-media through the skin as the result of diffusion processes. The stratum corneum, the outermost layer of skin, is the most resistive barrier to such a form of penetration. In this work, a new model is proposed to predict nanoparticles’ transport through this layer. It introduces the concept of the three-dimensional model of the stratum corneum, which allows to define the skin surface area from which diffusion occurs. This structure was replaced by the single capillary, resulting from theoretical considerations. Modeling of the diffusion process of nanoparticles as the result of Brownian motion in such a capillary was performed numerically using COMSOL Multiphysics package programs. Further, using the dimensions of such a capillary, a new model of diffusion was developed in which the parameters allow to determine the effective diffusion coefficient as a function of nanoparticle size and the viscosity of a liquid. As a result, the proposed models provide a new and efficient approach to the determination of the nano-molecules’ transport phenomena through the skin layer

Effect of Surfactant Concentration in the Emulsions on the Process of Oleophilic Porous Structures Imbibition

The spontaneous imbibition has been a subject of the scientific interest being a background process for numerous industrial technologies and occurring in the natural environment. In literature the experimental and theoretical results regarding this phenomenon describe a media imbibition with single-phase liquids and the relation between the process rate and media characteristics. The imbibition of oleophilic porous structures with two-phase liquids, only one phase of which was wetting, is an objective of the current publication. The main purpose is to estimate the influence of both surfactant fraction and the dispersed phase concentration on the mentioned process. The imbibition rate was investigated during model experiments with stabilized oil-in-water emulsions having the dispersed phase concentrations of 10 vol%, 30 vol% and 50 vol%. The prepared emulsions differed with fraction of the added surfactant, i.e. 1 vol%, 2 vol% and 5 vol%. The obtained results allowed to conclude that at the him≥0.02 m, the dispersed phase concentration and viscosity decreased versus height. However, the raise of the surfactant fraction caused the increase of mass and height of the imbibed emulsions in porous medium. Moreover, this provided increasing of viscosity and a change of emulsions behaviour as a liquid