Filtration of deformable emulsion droplets

Oil-in-water (o/w) emulsions of different droplet size were filtered on membranes of various pore sizes to investigate the growth and behaviour of o/w filter cakes. The cake desorptivity S and the filter membrane resistance R were measured at various filtration pressures P. The variation of S with P shows that filter cake oil droplets of radius a are effectively rigid for P < gamma/a and fully deformable for P > gamma/a, where gamma is the oil-water interfacial tension. For the largest P, when S became P-independent, the filter cake remained water-permeable as expected from theory.