Foam Electrokinetic Separation

Suspended particles can often be surface active and when other surfactant molecules (i.e. detergents) are also present the collective dynamics and ordering of the particles at the interfaces is highly non-trivial and able to strongly influence the overall flow of liquid, especially when electric or other external fields are applied. The dynamics of particles suspended in a surfactant covered water film will be investigated experimentally and theoretically. The ultimate goal is to use the flow in a network of such films (i.e. in foam) to perform electrophoresis to separate the proteins. Developing a foam-based electrophoresis will be highly novel and very exciting. The importance of the mathematical modelling is that in this the different effects can be turned on/off, to understand the influence of each. In experiments, i.e. in reality, you can't just turn on/off different bits of the physics/chemistry! The research will involve the use of state-of-the-art flow visualization tools, nanoparticle size measurement devices and mathematical modelling and numerical simulations.