Emulsions are dispersions of two (or more) immiscible liquids (e.g., oil and water), and are widely used in various industries including food, cosmetics, pharmaceutics, etc. Premix membrane emulsification is an interesting technique for the controlled production of small and uniformly sized droplets. In this process, a coarse emulsion (premix) is f...
Microfluidic devices make precisely controlled processing of substances possible on a microliter level. The advantage is that, due to the small sizes, the driving forces for mass and heat transfer are high. The surface to volume ratios are also high, which can benefit many surface oriented processes. In addition, because of their small volumes, mic...
This thesis presents a comprehensive research report on microbiological aspects of biofouling occurrence in full-scale reverse osmosis (RO) systems. Biofouling is a process in which microorganisms attach to membranes and develop into a thick film that can choke the entire RO system. Management of this problem requires basic understanding of the mec...
This thesis aims at preparation of hollow polylactide (PLA) microcapsules for use as ultrasound contrast agents with controlled size, structure and mechanical and thermal properties. The microcapsules were prepared with multistage premix membrane emulsification. The mechanical and thermal properties of the microcapsules, and of films that were prep...
The aim of this thesis is to elucidate the underlying processes and mechanisms that determine the droplet size of emulsions produced with microstructured systems, such as premix microstructure homogenization and microchannel emulsification. The ultimate goal is to describe these methods based on detailed knowledge on droplet break-up and droplet fo...
Membrane emulsification is a relatively new technique to produce emulsions. In this method the oil phase is pushed through a membrane, a sieve with very small holes, and forms droplets in the water phase at the other side of the membrane. The most important advantage of this technique is that all the formed droplets have the same size and the emuls...
The aim of this study was to make accurate predictions on the interaction of biologically relevant molecules with lipid bilayer membranes. We emphasised on the partitioning of these molecules between the membrane phase, and the aqueous phase quantified by the partition coefficient. To make detailed predictions a theory had to be set up along the li...
