Effect of the Addition of Biopolymers in Micellar Systems

The importance of the formulation of emulsions in the various industries is steadily increasing, while it affected only the area of cosmetics. It is now in the pharmaceutical, petroleum, paint and others. Surfactants and polymers are the two most important additives in the formulation of emulsions (water in oil or oil in water). Their interactions modify significantly the surface properties and rheology of these systems. The control of these properties has become a major sauced of researcher laboratories Our study is related to the petroleum field, where we intend to develop stable emulsions (microemulsion) with interfacial tensions as low as possible with appropriate rheological properties. We have been able to prepare microemulsions with interfacial tensions of the order of 10−4 mN /m but the viscosities were comparable to that of water [1]. To improve the rheological properties, we undertook to study the influence of the addition of the biopolymer in these microemulsions in order to achieve viscosities in the range of 200 mPa in a way to conserve the values of interfacial tension. In this work, we present the results obtained with the following biopolymers hydroxyethyl cellulose and hydroxyethyl hydrophobic modified, discussing particularly the mode of introduction of these biopolymers.