Emulsion is a thermo unstable polydisperse system, including single emulsion and double emulsion. Single emulsion is divided into two groups, W/O emulsion and oil-in-water (O/W). Freezing and thawing treatment has been used to destroy the O/W emulsion [1], but it is a novel physical method to demulsificate the W/O emulsion. Recently, a few papers have presented that it was available to demulsificate the lubricating oil sludge and the high water content emulsions [2-3]. And the demulsification method has been proved efficiently to the W/O emulsions with pure or de-ionized water as the droplet phase, whatever the viscosity of oil phase was high or low, in our previous works [3-4]. Those papers researched on some effects such as freezing temperature, freezing rate, freeze/thaw cycles and water content etc. on demulsification performance, but rarely on the effect of oil phase freezing point. Thus the present work focuses on it. The research will supply a demulsification mechanism of freeze/thaw on W/O emulsion and a new guide for selection of oil phase of emulsion liquid membrane (ELM) process.
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