Emulsions, or oil-water mixtures, are of common occurrence in our daily lives.
“In fact, our life begins with emulsions. When a baby is born the very first thing it drinks is milk, which is an emulsion,” said Sushant Anand, assistant professor of mechanical and industrial engineering. “So, we have long relationships with emulsions.”
Emulsions are used in more items than we may realize. They are used in drug delivery, material synthesis, cosmetics, oil recovery, food products, and many multibillion-dollar industries.
One of the most common examples of emulsions is oil and water. And this is an area where Anand and his team developed a new technique for creating emulsions. This work has recently been reported in Nature Communications.
“If you make the emulsions at the nanoscale, which we call nano-emulsions, it improves the stability, the longevity, and improves the property of the whole emulsion,” Anand said. “Typically, when you add oil and water, the oil droplets will coalesce with each other. But if you add certain stabilizing agents, which we call detergents, then you prevent the coalescence of the droplets. Now, you can make the droplets discrete and, at the nanoscale, it improves the stability, the longevity, and it increases their absorption capacity as drugs, etc. It’s very efficient to go to nano-emulsions.”
Emulsions, or oil-water mixtures, are of common occurrence in our daily lives.
“In fact, our life begins with emulsions. When a baby is born the very first thing it drinks is milk, which is an emulsion,” said Sushant Anand, assistant professor of mechanical and industrial engineering. “So, we have long relationships with emulsions.”
Emulsions are used in more items than we may realize. They are used in drug delivery, material synthesis, cosmetics, oil recovery, food products, and many multibillion-dollar industries.
One of the most common examples of emulsions is oil and water. And this is an area where Anand and his team developed a new technique for creating emulsions. This work has recently been reported in Nature Communications.
“If you make the emulsions at the nanoscale, which we call nano-emulsions, it improves the stability, the longevity, and improves the property of the whole emulsion,” Anand said. “Typically, when you add oil and water, the oil droplets will coalesce with each other. But if you add certain stabilizing agents, which we call detergents, then you prevent the coalescence of the droplets. Now, you can make the droplets discrete and, at the nanoscale, it improves the stability, the longevity, and it increases their absorption capacity as drugs, etc. It’s very efficient to go to nano-emulsions.”
No comments:
Post a Comment