Langmuir, Vol.11, No.9, 3382-3387, 1995
Preparing Microemulsions with Alkyl Monoglucosides and the Role of N-Alkanols
With this paper, we continue the series of our studies on the applicability of biological amphiphiles for emulsifying mineral oils. In the first part, we show that the effect of N-alkanols on the phase behavior of microemulsions results from the position of the plait points in the isothermal phase tetrahedra of quaternary water-oil-amphiphile-alkanol mixtures. In the second part, we demonstrate the dependence of the effect of propanol, in particular, on the carbon number of the oil in mixtures with alkyl poly(glycol ethers) as amphiphiles and, correspondingly, supplement our recently published recipe for preparing microemulsions with aromatic oils and lecithins. In the last part, we study the applicability of alkyl monoglucosides C(i)G(1) for preparing microemulsions, resulting in a recipe of how to choose the carbon number of the alkanol for emulsifying alkanes and aromatic oils with C(i)G(1). Alkyl monoglucosides turn out to be efficient emulsifiers, with the one-phase microemulsions being rather insensitive to temperature and salt concentration.