Wetting and spreading of commercially available aqueous surfactants on porous materials

The wetting properties of aqueous solutions of a commercially available surfactant at various concentrations on porous media are investigated using the KRUSS DSA100 shape analyzer and the ADVANCED software to process the data. Time evolution of both the contact angle and drop base diameter at each surfactant concentration after deposition were monitored. Three different porous substrates (sponges) were examined. The sponges used were a car sponge, dish sponge and audio sponge. The sponges were investigated both dry and at different degrees of saturation, that is, the amount of water absorbed into the sponge. It was found that pure distilled water droplets deposited on the dry porous media showed non-wetting. However, if droplets of surfactant solutions were deposited, then a change to a complete wetting case was found at all surfactant concentrations used. It has been observed that for all sponges, no matter the degree of saturation, they display a minimum contact angle after which the droplet is rapidly absorbed into the porous media

Foam quality of foams formed on capillaries and porous media systems

Foams are of great importance as a result of their expansive presence in everyday life-they are used in the food, cosmetic, and process industries, and in detergency, oil recovery, and firefighting. There is a little understanding of foam formation using soft porous media in terms of the quality of foam and foam formation. Interaction of foams with porous media has recently been investigated in a study by Arjmandi-Tash et al., where three different regimes of foam drainage in contact with porous media were observed. In this study, the amount of foam generated using porous media with surfactant solutions is investigated. The aim is to understand the quality of foam produced using porous media. The effect of capillary sizes and arrangement of porous in porous media has on the quality of foam is investigated. This is then followed by the use of soft porous media for foam formation to understand how the foam is generated on the surface of the porous media and the effect that different conditions (such as concentration) have on the quality of the foam. The quality of foam is a blanket term for bubble size, liquid volume fraction, and stability of the foam. The liquid volume fraction is calculated using a homemade dynamic foam analyser, which is used to obtain the distribution of liquid volume fraction along with the foam height. Soft porous media does not influence substantially the rate of decay of foam produced, however, it decreases the average diameter of the bubbles, whilst increasing the range of bubble sizes due to the wide range of pore sizes present in the soft porous media. The foam analyser showed the expected behaviour that, as the foam decays and becomes drier, the liquid volume fraction of the foam falls, and therefore the conductivity of foam also decreases, indicating the usefulness of the home-made device for future investigations

Foam formation by compression/decompression cycle of soft porous media

A theory of the amount of foam produced by compression/decompression cycles of a soft porous media is developed. The amount of foam produced was found to be dependent on both the amount of surfactant within the media and the minimum separation between the plates of the compression device. The latter is determined by the mechanical properties of the soft media. The theory also shows the importance of the decompression of the media as this is the mechanism of where the air penetrates into the soft porous material. The accumulated air is used during the compression stage for foam formation. The theoretically predicted values of foam mass are found to have good agreement with experimental observations, which validates the theory predictions. The theory also predicts independence of the foam produced in terms of the frequency of compression/decompression cycles, which agrees with our experimental observations