Hydration film measurement on mica and coal surfaces using atomic force microscopy and interfacial interactions

The hydration film on particle surface plays an important role in bubble-particle adhesion in mineral flotation process. The thicknesses of the hydration films on natural hydrophobic coal and hydrophilic mica surfaces were measured directly by atomic force microscopy （AFM） based on the bending mode of the nominal constant compliance regime in AFM force curve in the present study. Surface and solid-liquid interfacial energies were calculated to explain the forming mechanism of the hydration film and atomic force microscopy data. The results show that there are significant differences in the structure and thickness of hydration films on coal and mica surfaces. Hydration film formed on mica surface with the thickness of 22.5 nm. In contrast, the bend was not detected in the nominal constant compliance regime. The van der Waals and polar interactions between both mica and coal and water molecules are characterized by an attractive effect, while the polar attractive free energy between water and mica （-87.36 mN/m） is significantly larger than that between water and coal （-32.89 mN/m）, which leads to a thicker and firmer hydration layer on the mica surface. The interfacial interaction free energy of the coal/water/bubble is greater than that of mica. The polar attractive force is large enough to overcome the repulsive van der Waals force and the low energy barrier of film rupture, achieving coal particle bubble adhesion with a total interfacial free energy of-56.30 mN/m.

Effect of hydration film on scanning images of atomic force microscope

A standard calibration grating was used for image scanning to investigate the effect of hydration films on imaging resolution by Atomic Force Microscope （AFM）. The results showed that the hydration films greatly affect the imaging resolution for the tapping mode, but no evident effect on the contact mode, The possible reasons for the effect of hydration films on scanning images of AFM are also brought forward here.

Growth rate of CO_(2) hydrate film on water-oil and water-gaseous CO_(2) interface

It is known that injection of carbon dioxide into the petroleum reservoir(CO_(2) flooding) is one of the effective methods for enhanced oil recovery. CO_(2) flooding may be complicated by formation of CO_(2) hydrate plugs. It makes topical investigation of CO_(2) hydrate formation in the system gaseous CO_(2)-oil-water. In this work, the growth rates of carbon dioxide hydrate films at the water-oil as well as the water-gas interface are studied in the pressure range of 2.30-3.04 MPa and at temperatures between -5.4 and 5.0℃. It is found that the growth rate for the water-oil interface is 3.5 times lower than that for the water-gas interface with carbon dioxide. It is hypothesised that the observed decrease in the growth rate is related to the mechanical resistance of the oil components adsorbed on the interface to the growth of the hydrate film. The growth rate of the film has been shown to depend on the experimental procedure,most likely due to the different initial concentrations of carbon dioxide in the aqueous solutions.

Effects of water salinity and content on particle size distribution and soil strength

The effect of NaCl on soil strength was investigated in this project based on salinity concentrations of 0 g/L, 5 g/L, 20 g/L, and 50 g/L as well as varying water contents of 15%-20%. Laser particle size analyzer was also performed to explain possible effects. From particle size analysis and strength tests, it is hypothesized that the strength of the soil is increased with the addition of certain salinity concentrations until there are reversed effects, which is between 20 g/L and 50 g/L from our study. The increase of strength is suggested to be the affect of a greater variety of particle sizes. Since NaCI plays a role in the particle size distribution, it also plays a role in the strength of soils. The degree of the effect of the water content also differs from concentrations, and could be due to the variation of hydration film thickness on particles, which is affected by the ions introduced from water.