Abstract This contribution deals with the development of emulsions formulated using thyme essential oil and a new biomass-derived surfactant. In addition, this work extends our knowledge concerning the factors that can influence stability and droplet size distributions of microfluidized emulsions, such as the geometry of the rotor–stator used and the homogenization rate in the primary homogenization. Stable thyme oil-in-water emulsions (30 wt%) containing submicron droplets were formed. Interestingly, laser diffraction results reveal that mean droplet sizes are mainly controlled by homogenization rates and polydispersity by the rotor–stator geometry used in the first step of homogenization. In addition, higher droplet sizes for pre-emulsions seem to be a key factor in order to reduce both the degree of recoalescence and the size of the droplets in the second homogenization step. Furthermore, higher droplet sizes in the pre-emulsion favour higher physical stability of the final emulsions. Finally, this research highlights the importance of controlling primary homogenization conditions for the physical stability of microfluidized emulsions that contain natural ingredients.

中文翻译：

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初级均质化步骤对用百里香油和 APPYCLEAN 6548 配制的微流化乳液的影响

摘要 此贡献涉及使用百里香精油和一种新的生物质衍生表面活性剂配制的乳液的开发。此外，这项工作扩展了我们关于影响微流化乳液稳定性和液滴尺寸分布的因素的知识，例如所用转子 - 定子的几何形状和初级均质中的均质率。形成了含有亚微米液滴的稳定百里香水包油乳液 (30 wt%)。有趣的是，激光衍射结果表明平均液滴尺寸主要受均匀化速率和多分散性的控制，这些分散性由均匀化第一步中使用的转子 - 定子几何形状控制。此外，用于预乳液的较大液滴尺寸似乎是降低再聚结程度和第二均化步骤中液滴尺寸的关键因素。此外，预乳液中较大的液滴尺寸有利于最终乳液的较高物理稳定性。最后，这项研究强调了控制初级均质条件对于含有天然成分的微流化乳液的物理稳定性的重要性。