Aging of an unstable w/o gel emulsion with a nonionic surfactant

We study an unstable highly concentrated emulsion of water droplets in oil with a nonionic surfactant. A technique of light diffusion coupled to a rheometer allows simultaneous measurement of average droplet radius \(R\) and emulsion shear elastic modulus \(G \prime\) during time. Over the studied range of volume fraction (from 71 to 95%), we show that Princen and Kiss’ (J Colloid Interface Sci 112:427–437, 1986) model does not apply. A dimensional analysis based on the hypothesis of dominant van der Waals forces is proposed for nonionic surfactants, which is in good agreement with experimental data. We also show that the measured average droplet volume increases linearly with time and that the coalescence rate strongly depends on the volume fraction in relation with different topological conformations of droplets.