Examining the role of salinity on the dynamic stability of Pickering emulsions

The effect of salinity on Pickering emulsion stability to coalescence under dynamic forces present during flow in porous media for applications including enhanced oil recovery is poorly understood. Recent work suggests the absence of significant electrostatic repulsion in brine prompts unattached particles to assemble into inter-droplet networks that increase emulsion stability. We hypothesize that emulsions stabilized by nanoparticles coated with (3-glycidyloxypropyl)trimethoxysilane (GLYMO) will generate particle networks in brine and exhibit greater stability to coalescence than in deionized water (DI).

We stabilized decane-in-water emulsions with GLYMO-coated silica nanoparticles at various particle concentrations using brine and DI as the aqueous phase. We imaged the emulsions to calculate droplet diameters, then centrifuged the emulsions and weighed the volume of decane released to determine the extent of coalescence. We compared these measurements to evaluate the effect of salinity on emulsion stability.

Emulsions demonstrate greater dynamic stability and smaller droplet diameters with increasing nanoparticle concentration and salinity. Controlling for differences in droplet size, we observe that brine reduces the emulsion coalescence rate by a factor of 78 ± 23 relative to DI. This difference supports and quantifies past work suggesting that unattached nanoparticles aggregate in brine and increase overall emulsion stability, whereas nanoparticles in DI remain separated.