dstl

Dstl are interested in removing liquid contaminants from capillary features (cracks in surfaces, screw threads etc.). We speculated that liquid decontaminants with low surface tension would have beneficial properties. The colloid literature, and in particular the oil recovery literature, discusss the properties of multiphase systems in terms of “Winsor types”, typically consisting of “brine” (water + electrolyte), “oil” (non-polar, water-insoluble solvent) and surfactant. Winsor I systems are oil-in-water microemulsions and Winsor II systems are water-in-oil microemulsions. Under certain circumstances, the mixture will separate into three phases. The middle (Winsor III) phase is surfactant-rich, and is reported to exhibit ultra-low surface tension. The glycol ethers (“Cellosolve” type solvents) consist of short (3-4) linked ether groups attached to short (3-4 carbon) alkyl chains. Although these materials would not normally be considered to be surfactants, their polar head, non-polar tail properties allow them to form a “surfactantless” Winsor III middle phase. We have found that small changes in temperature, electrolyte concentration or addition of contaminant can cause these novel colloids to phase separate. In our decontamination experiments, we have observed that contaminant-induced phase separation takes the form of droplets of the separating phase. These droplets are highly mobile, exhibiting behaviour that is visually similar to Brownian motion, which induces somewhat turbulent liquid currents in the vicinity of the contaminant. We tentatively attribute this behaviour to the Marangoni effect. We present our work as an interesting physics/ physical chemistry phenomenon that should be suitable for mathematical analysis.