• Advanced Questions

  CMC in surfactant solutions

  Posted by belassi on May 28, 2016 at 1:05 am

  Harry’s Cosmetology has, on P. 190, an interesting graphic that shows the relationship between CMC (critical micelle concentration) vs detergency, surface tension, osmotic pressure, interfacial tension and, the thing that interests me, “equivalent conductivity”. Now, none of the above mentioned things are easy to measure except one, conductivity. I used to be an electronics engineer and I still possess a conductivity test instrument. The conductivity curve, interestingly, shows a sharp break point at the exact concentration of detergency maximum.
  It occurs to me that it may be possible to test many surfactant systems by titrating the surfactant with water while plotting the conductivity, and watching for the break point. This could allow optimisation of the surfactant system, giving perfct detergency without using any excess % surfactant. 
  What do you think?

  belassi replied 8 years, 5 months ago 1 Member · 0 Replies
• 0 Replies

Log In to Reply