BACKGROUND Non-Newtonian fluids occur in many relevant flow and mixing scenarios at the lab and industrial scale. The addition of acid or basic solutions to a non-Newtonian fluid is not an infrequent operation, particularly in Biotechnology applications where the pH of Non-Newtonian culture broths is usually regulated using this strategy. METHODOLOGY AND FINDINGS We conducted mixing experimen...

In this work we investigated the scattering and absorption properties of nanofluids consisting in aqueous suspensions of single wall carbon nanohorns. The characteristics of these nanofluids were evaluated in order to use them as direct sunlight absorber fluids in solar devices. The investigation was carried our for nanohorns of different morphologies and for suspensions prepared with different...

Inhibition of bacterial growth is the basis of the three methods commonly used for determining the potency of penicillin solutions. With the Oxford cup method (Abraham et al., 1941; Foster and Woodruff, 1944), penicillin is allowed to diffuse out into agar plates from small glass cups, and the diameters of the zones of inhibition of bacterial growth are measured. In dilution methods (Foster and...

Electrorheological fluids are smart materials that are concentrated suspensions of polarizable particles in a nonconducting dielectric liquid. In moderately large electric fields the particles form chains along the field lines and these chains then aggregate into the form of columns. These chainlike and columnar structures yield dramatic changes in the rheological properties of the suspensions....

Spherical colloids, in an absence of external fields, are commonly assumed to interact solely through rotationally-invariant potentials, u(r). While the presence of permanent dipoles in aqueous suspensions has been previously suggested by some experiments, the rotational degrees of freedom of spherical colloids are typically neglected. We prove, by direct experiments, the presence of permanent ...

We consider tracer diffusion in colloidal suspensions under solid loading conditions, where hydrodynamic interactions play an important role. To this end, we carry out computer simulations based on the hybrid stochastic rotation dynamics-molecular dynamics (SRD-MD) technique. Many details of the simulation method are discussed in detail. In particular, our choices for the SRD-MD parameters and ...

This thesis discusses the application of colloidal particles to optofluidic systems. Colloidal particles can be added as a “dopant” to the liquids in these devices to provide functionality that cannot be obtained with homogenous fluids. We examine electrooptic effects in liquid suspensions asymmetric metallic nanoparticles. The theoretical optical properties of gold nanorods and noble metal nan...

Functionalization of colloidal particles based on the use of polyelectrolytes and heterocoagulation was combined with electrophoretic deposition (EPD), with the aim of depositing titania-polystyrene (TiO(2)-PS) composite particles on Ti6Al4V substrates. The composite particles were obtained by heterocoagulation of TiO(2) nanoparticles on the surface of monosized polystyrene beads of 4.6 microm ...

Magnetic fluids may be classified as ferrofluids (FF), which are colloidal suspensions of very fine (∼ 10 nm) magnetic particles, and magnetorheological fluids, which are suspensions of larger, usually non-stable, magnetic particles. We review the general classification and the main properties of FF, some theoretical models and a few applications. We consider the stability of a FF in terms of v...

The optimization of the poor heat transfer characteristics of fluids conventionally employed in solar devices are at present one of the main topics for system efficiency and compactness. In the present work we investigated the optical and thermal properties of nanofluids consisting in aqueous suspensions of single wall carbon nanohorns. The characteristics of these nanofluids were evaluated in ...