Mesoscopic simulation on the microemulsion system stabilized by bola surfactant

Abstract

Microemulsion and reverse microemulsion exhibited important applications in many fields. Bola-surfactant as a specific type of surfactants has a certain impact on the formation and stability of the microemulsion and reverse microemulsion. In this work, the formation and stability of the O/W and reverse W/O microemulsion at different surfactant concentration, inorganic salt, temperature and shear rate were researched using Dissipative particle dynamics (DPD) simulation on mesoscopic level. The results show that two types of Microemulsions could form and mutually transform with changing the oil-water ratio under the same other conditions. The O/W Microemulsion emulsified by a little surfactants and have better abbility to resist inorganic salt, temperature and shear rate comparing to the reverse W/O Microemulsion. The simulation results provide new insight into formation, transformation and stability conditions of different microemulsions from the mesoscopic scale, and supply theoretical guidance for the practical application of the microemulsions.

Graphical Abstract

Keywords:

• Dissipative particle dynamics (DPD) simulation
• microemulsion
• end to end distance
• interfacial tension

Additional information

Funding

The work was financially supported by the Innovation Foundation Project [BZXYG1617]; the Natural Science Foundation of Shandong Province of China under Grant [ZR2018QB007]; the Key Technology Research and Development Program of Shandong Province under Grant [2019GSF109117].