The effect of the addition of fatty alcohol with long alkyl chains (FA) on the size of oleic acid (OA) droplet in surfactant-free emulsions (SFEs) was investigated.
First, it was found that the coalescence was responsible for the rate of OA droplet growth estimated from changes with time in the cube of mean droplet radius, r
3. On the other hand, the dispersion stability of OA-SFE was significantly improved when the SFE was prepared from the OA/1-octadecanol (OD) mixed oil in which weight fraction of OD was 0.1. Secondly, we found that only OA/OD mixed oil in which weight fraction of OD was 0.4 formed an α-gel as determined from differential scanning calorimetry (DSC), a dynamic viscoelasticity, and a small angle X-ray scattering (SAXS) measurements. Furthermore, we found the OA/OD α-gel to have rigidly ordered air-water interface and its collapse pressure was higher when OA was used without OD.
From our investigation, we found that by adding OD to OA in an aqueous solution, the OA/OD mixture spontaneously formed α-gel on the droplet surface stabilizing the emulsion by preventing droplets from coalescence.
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