Tuning of Coacervate Phase Behavior of Polyoxymethylene (4) Lauryl Ether in Aqueous Alcoholic Solution: Investigation of Thermodynamics

Abstract

In case of non-ionic surfactant, the phase partition behavior (CP) of micellar solution was vary under the influence of various additive mixed systems. The non-ionic surfactant in an aqueous medium shows phase separation above the critical micelle concentration (CMC), There is a change in micellar interactions at cloud point (CP) with increase in temperature. The insertion of foreign material to surfactant solution alters the clouding temperature. In this paper we report how cloud point varies with addition of alcohol as additives. For non-ionic surfactant Polyoxyethylene (4) lauryl ether (Brij-30) the CP temperature was investigated at variable concentrations of surfactant in pure and additive mixed systems. The results we obtained shows that cloud point of pure Brij-30 surfactant decreases with enhancement in surfactant concentration from 1% to 10% (w/v) in a 22% aqueous ethanolic medium. Similarly, the cloud point values of Brij-30 in presence of n-alcohols shows increasing trend in case of propanol and butanol, specifying that their solubilization helps to form swollen water structures, thus favoring micelle hydration, while the presence of alcohols like pentanol, hexanol and heptanol shows a decreasing trend with increasing micelle size. The change in cloud points of Brij-30 in participation of various n-alcohols plays an important role in demonstrating the effect of the nature of additives on the stability of micelle. The foam ability and foam stability data discusses the stability of micelle aggregation. The important information about the thermodynamic entities were calculated using “Phase Separation Model”.