Foam formation

Several conditions are needed to produce foam: there must be mechanical

work, surface active components (surfactants) that reduce thesurface tension, and the
formation of foam faster than its breakdown. To create foam, work (W) is needed to
increase the surface area(A):

where is the surface tension.

One of the ways foam is created is through dispersion, where a large amount of gas is
mixed with a liquid. A more specific method of dispersion involves injecting a gas
through a hole in a solid into a liquid. If this process is completed very slowly, then one
bubble can be emitted from the orifice at a time as shown in the picture below.
One of the theories put forth for determining the separation time is shown below;
however, while this theory produces the theoretical data that matches with experimental
data, detachment due to capillarity is accepted as a better explanation.

Rising bubble from orifice

The buoyancy force will act to raise the bubble, which is

where

is the volume of the bubble,

is the acceleration due to gravity, and 1 is

the density of the gas 2 is the density of the liquid. The force working against the
buoyancy force is the surface tension force, which is
,
where is the surface tension, and

is the radius of the orifice. As more air is

pushed into the bubble, the buoyancy force grows quicker than the surface
tension force. Thus, detachment will occur when the buoyancy force is large
enough to overcome the surface tension force.

In addition, if the bubble is treated as a sphere with a radius of

volume

and the

is substituted in to the equation above, separation occurs at the

moment when

Examining this phenomenon from a capillarity viewpoint for a bubble that

is being formed very slowly, it can be assumed that the pressure

inside

is constant everywhere. The hydrostatic pressure in the liquid is

designated by

. The change in pressure across the interface from gas

to liquid is equal to the capillary pressure; hence,

where R1 and R2 are the radii of curvature and are set as positive. At
the stem of the bubble, R3 and R4 are the radii of curvature also
treated as positive. Here the hydrostatic pressure in the liquid has to
take in account z, the distance from the top to the stem of the bubble.
The new hydrostatic pressure at the stem of the bubble is p 0(1-2)z.
The hydrostatic pressure balances the capillary pressure which is
shown below:

Finally, the difference in the top and bottom pressure will equal
the change in hydrostatic pressure:

At the stem of the bubble, the shape of the bubble is nearly

cylindrical; consequently, either R3 or R4 will be very large
while the other radius of curvature will be very small. As the
stem of the bubble grows in length, it becomes more unstable
as one of the radius grows and the other shrinks. At a certain
point, the vertical length of the stem exceeds the
circumference of the stem and due to the buoyancy forces
the bubble separates and the process repeats. [4]
Foam fractionation

Applications[edit]
1. Enrichment of the solutions of biomolecules in pharmaceutical and food
technologies.
2. Stripping of surface-active contaminants from streams of waste water.
3. Stripping of non-surface-active contaminants from streams of waste water (such as
metal ions) with the help of one or more assistant surfactants.
4. The removal of frother downstream of froth flotation operations (known as frother
stripping).