As a hydrophilic emulsifier it leads into a foam during using it as emulsifier in emulsion. While agitating with Ultraturax or even in hotplate stirrer it happnes. How you ever had such an experience? What should I do for not having this foam?
What kind of emulsion are you to make and could you describe the whole procedure?
I usually get a lot of foam in a case when emulsifier is not really compatible with a system.
Igors Sivacovs
That's a double emulsion (W/O/W) in which Tween 20 was used in the outer layer. Well, I'm using high energy method which consists of using Ultraturax. I think you're right maybe it's not compatible with one of the materials. In fact, I thought the agitation is the reason of this unexpected foam.
Samaneh Nayebifar
I have been working more with O/W emulsions and foam formation was depending on several factors
Agitation is one of them. But as I understand, you are using high-speed rotor/stator homogenizer that is not making noticeable vortex while providing decent amount of mechanical force. I would stick to it.
Type of emulsifier. As I understand, if surfactant is not very suitable enough for a phase it is not adsorbed on phase boundary surface but rather stays in a free form and stabilize a foam. Overcharging a surfactant gives similar effect.
Liquid addition rate and effectiveness of homogenization can also affect it through particle size variation. In my cases too rapid water addition produced coarse emulsion with large particle sizes. Therefore the total area of phase boundary drops and more surfactant stay in a free form.
For some reason, there was a difference if a surfactant was added to oil phase or water phase, and direct or phase-inversion emulsification techniques were used.
@Igors Sivacovs
Thank you for your comprehensive answer. As you said above, there are many factors: agitation, type of emulsifier,...
I think I should consider all of them and change and see what happens next.
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