Evaporation from an ionic liquid emulsion

The conditions during evaporation in a liquid crystal-in-ionic liquid microemulsion (LC/mu Em) were estimated using the phase diagram of the system. The equations for selected tie lines were established and the coordinates calculated for the sites, at which the evaporation lines crossed the tie lines. These values combined with the coordinates for the phases connecting the tie lines were used to calculate the amounts and the composition of the fractions of the two phases present in the emulsion during the evaporation. One of the emulsion phases was a lamellar liquid crystal and high energy emulsification would lead to the liquid crystal being disrupted to form vesicles. Such a system tenders a unique opportunity to study the interaction between vesicles and normal micelles, which gradually change to inverse micelles over bi-continuous structures. The amount of vesicles in the liquid phase versus the fraction liquid crystal was calculated for two extreme cases of vesicle core size and shell thickness. The limit of evaporation while retaining the vesicle structure was calculated for emulsions of different original compositions assuming the minimum continuous liquid phase to be 50% of the emulsion. (c) 2007 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.