Porous ceramics with near‐zero shrinkage and low thermal conductivity from hazardous secondary aluminum dross

The use of particles as foam and emulsion stabilising species, with or without surfactants, has received great interest in recent years. The majority of work has studied the effects of particles as stabilisers in emulsion systems, but recent successes has widened consideration into foams, where industries such as flotation and food processing have encountered the effects of particle stabilisation for many years. This review seeks to clarify studies into emulsions, highlighting new research in this area, and relate similarities and differences to foam systems. Past research has focused on defining the interaction mechanisms of stability, such as principles of attachment energies, particle-particle forces at the interface and changes to the interfilm, with a view to ascertain conditions giving optimum stability. Studied conditions include effects of particle contact angle, aggregation formations, concentration, size and interactions of other species (i.e. surfactant). Mechanisms can be complex, but overall the principle of particles creating a steric barrier to coalescence, is a straitforward basis of interaction. Much research in emulsions can be applied to foam systems, however evidence would suggest foam systems are under a number of additional constraints, and the stability 'window' for particles is smaller, in terms of size and contact angle ranges. Also, because of increased density differences and interfilm perturbations in foam systems, retardation of drainage is often as important to stability as inhibiting coalescence.

Wet foams are used in many important technologies either as end or intermediate products. However, the thermodynamic instability of wet foams leads to undesired bubble coarsening over time. Foam stability can be drastically improved by using particles instead of surfactants as foam stabilizers, since particles tend to adsorb irreversibly at the air-water interface. Recently, we presented a novel method for the preparation of high-volume particle-stabilized foams which show neither bubble growth nor drainage over more than 4 days. The method is based on the in-situ hydrophobization of initially hydrophilic particles to enable their adsorption on the surface of air bubbles. In-situ hydrophobization is accomplished through the adsorption of short-chain amphiphiles on the particle surface. In this work, we illustrate how this novel method can be applied to particles with various surface chemistries. For that purpose, the functional group of the amphiphilic molecule was tailored according to the surface chemistry of the particles to be used as foam stabilizers. Short-chain carboxylic acids, alkyl gallates, and alkylamines were shown to be appropriate amphiphiles to in-situ hydrophobize the surface of different inorganic particles. Ultrastable wet foams of various chemical compositions were prepared using these amphiphiles. The simplicity and versatility of this approach is expected to aid the formulation of stable wet foams for a variety of applications in materials manufacturing, food, cosmetics, and oil recovery, among others.