Synopsis:

Surfactants find numerous applications in chemical process industries, in the formulation of pharmaceuticals, household products, and agricultural chemicals, in mineral processing technologies, and in food processing industries.  Naturally occurring surfactants in plants, animals, and humans have important biological or physiological functions.  The research activity in the field of surfactants has experienced enormous growth during the last twenty five years.  More than one thousand research articles are published annually and many scientific journals are devoted to the study of surfactants.

The wide-spread applications of surfactants originate from the intrinsic duality in their molecular characteristics, namely, they are composed of a polar head group that likes water and a non-polar tail group that dislikes water.  Numerous variations are possible in the types of the head groups and tail groups.   This variety in the molecular structure of the surfactants allows for extensive variation in their solution and interfacial properties.

One would naturally like to discover the link between the molecular structure of the surfactant and its self-assembling and solution properties so that surfactants can be synthesized or selected specifically for a given application.  This course is designed to address this need.

Who Should Attend:

This course is designed for industrial researchers and practitioners interested in surfactants, block copolymers and their applications. Depending on the interest of the audience, the topics and the extent of coverage can be varied from the description given below.

Short Course Registration

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Instructor

Professor Nagarajan is Professor of Chemical Engineering at the Pennsylvania State University.  He has pursued a research program focusing on the fundamentals of surfactant and block copolymer self-assembly over the past twenty five years.  He has formulated many of the predictive models available in the literature for a variety of self-assembly phenomena.  His research has also concentrated on the development of practical applications for self-assembled systems.  Past and current research projects include: enhanced oil recovery by surfactant/microemulsion flooding, chemical separations using emulsion liquid membranes, selective chemical extractions using aqueous micellar systems, preparation of stable concentrated liquid flavorings using
surfactant and block copolymer micelles,  aggregation of lubricant additives and additive interactions, separation of proteins and enzymes using microemulsions, enzymatic biocatalysis in block copolymer microdomains and in microemulsions, use of block copolymer surfactants for deinking and recycling of office waste paper, use of block copolymers for integrated fermentation and product recovery, and applications of surfactants in nanoparticle synthesis and processing.  He is a recipient of the Outstanding Research Award from the Pennsylvania State Engineering Society, US-France Foundation Fellowship for sabbatical research in Paris, France, and a CNRS Director of Research position during the period of sabbatical research in Toulouse, France.  He is on the editorial advisory board of Journal of Colloid and Interface Science.  He has been serving as the Program Chair of the American Chemical Society Division of Colloid and Surface Chemistry. He is currently working on a monograph "Surfactant Self-Assembly: A Predictive Molecular Thermodynamic Approach" which will provide much of the textual material for the short course.

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(C)  2002   Particles Conference