Abstract
A novel technique using a “hydrodynamic force balance” was introduced to determine the maximum value of attractive forces between two micrometer-sized bitumen droplets in a doublet suspended in water. The technique is based on breaking up a doublet in a gradually increasing wall shear flow and calculating the colloidal force between the two droplets from the breakup shear rate. The measurable force ranges from 10-13 to 10-11 N. The upper limit can be further raised after some modifications to the instrument. The validity of the method has been verified by comparing the determined Hamaker constant of bitumen−water−bitumen with both the experimental data obtained from another force-measurement technique and the literature value. The methed is applicable to both emulsion and suspension systems although only a bitumen-in-water emulsion was investigated in this study. A bitumen droplet surface contains isolated “bumps” of 50−100 nm in horizontal diameter according to previous study. A disk−sphere model assumin...
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