UNDERSTANDING FOAMING MECHANISMS 

Foaming is a complicated phenomenon in which a significant number of mechanisms play a key role. Nucleation, growing, degeneration mechanisms (coalescence, coarsening, drainage) and stabilization of the cellular structure occur in every foaming process but the way they take place depend on the foaming technology used, the formulation and the processing parameters. In addition, most foaming processes can be considered as “black boxes”, this means that you know the formulation and the processing parameters used and you can characterize the final foam obtained, but there is no experimental information about how the cellular structure and density of the foam are developed. Having a proper understanding of how foaming mechanisms behave in each process is very helpful to develop foams with tailored cellular structures and properties. 

PART 1 – QUALITATIVE & QUANTITATIVE EVALUATION OF FOAMING MECHANISMS

SPEAKER: MIGUEL ANGEL RODRIGUEZ-PEREZ

In this webinar, we first explain the key foaming mechanisms that need to be considered to understand a foaming process. Then, we focus on the experimental approaches we have developed in the last ten years to analyze these foaming mechanisms. 

These techniques can be divided in ex-situ approaches, which are used in foaming processes that can be stopped and in-situ methodologies, which are used in foaming processes that cannot be stopped. All of them look for a proper understanding of critical aspects such as the evolution of density with time, the evolution of cell size and cell density with time, how degeneration mechanisms affect the final cellular structure, etc.