Interfacial tension and surface elasticity of carbon black (CB) covered oil-water interface

Carboxyl-terminated carbon black (CB) particles have been proposed as readily available, biocompatible dispersants to stabilize oil-in-water emulsions after an oil spill. Since the reduction in interfacial tension and the increase in interfacial elasticity are the key parameters which relate interfacial mechanics to emulsion stability, this investigation explores the effect of CB adsorption and surface coverage on oil-water interfacial tension and elasticity. Flocculation of CB was explored as ionic strength was increased from 0 to 0.6 M, approximately the salinity of seawater. As salinity increases, CB aggregates into larger particles from 100 nm to 6 μm. The interfacial tension and dilational viscoelasticity were measured for two systems: a drop of a CB suspension in oil and an inverted oil drop in a CB suspension. For the arrangement of a CB suspension drop in oil, most of the CB settles and accumulates toward the bottom of the drop with only small surface adsorption and no appreciable effect is observed on the dynamic interfacial tension or the dilational viscoelasticity. On reversing the arrangement to an inverted oil drop in CB suspension and increasing the convection of the outer phase, the surface coverage increases considerably. The CB coverage becomes more uniform with higher convection with an average value of approximately 2.6 g/m(2), which is representative of the coverage in Pickering emulsions stabilized by CB particles. The CB coverage decreases the surface tension from about 30 to 8.5 mN/m accompanied by an increase in the surface elasticity to 20.7 mN/m. The sharp contrast between the results from the CB suspension drop and the oil drop could be partially due to the effect of the wetting characteristics of the particles or due to the significant differences between the convection in the two cases.