Sustainable Surfactant and Formulation Engineering via Microflow Chemical Pulses

Dynamic light scattering is a well established technique in the characterisation of transnational diffusion coefficients for a variety of systems including biological structures, colloidal suspensions, and surfactant solutions. However, its shortcomings are evident when carrying out experiments, as samples have to be individually made and loaded into the apparatus.
Recent work has been aimed at the development of instrumental setups to carry out light scattering measurements under flow, showing very promising results. Initially, this work aims to build on these studies to develop a similar setup implementing programmable sample injection, a microfluidic formulator, and a light scattering apparatus for inline formulation, mixing, and measurement of model cleaning solutions.
Cleaning products are used in everyday lives from hand and dish washing, to laundry detergents. These solutions all utilise surfactant molecules as the surface active component for the removal of oil and fatty substrates from the area of interest, producing microemulsions. Although there has been much work on the physical properties and dynamics of microemulsions, an understanding on how the components in a cleaning product effect the effciency in cleaning, is not very well understood.
By coupling rapid formulation and mixing to light scattering measurements, the main aim of this project is to determine the effect of composition and chemical structure of surfactants to their effectiveness in emulsifying oily and fatty solution. Initial results show that the custom light scattering apparatus which will be used for this study is able to reproduce results from commercially available instruments.