Measurement of the lifetime of individual foam lamellae

Foams play a crucial role in a number of practical applications. Their analysis in terms of stability is subject to a large number of parameters. An automated, light reflection based device for the measurement of the lifetime of a single foam lamella of aqueous surfactant solutions in contact with the liquid and gas phases is proposed. The capability of the method is shown for the analysis of the cationic and anionic model surfactants hexadecyltrimethylammonium bromide (CTAB) and sodium dodecyl sulfate (SDS) with saturated humidity, respectively. A statistical approach for analysis of the individual foam lamella lifetimes is presented and a comparison to the foam stability parameters obtained from a foam column device is presented.