Effect of temperature and solids on the rheology of water-in-oil emulsions

This article reports on an experimental study on the effect of temperature on the viscosity behavior of water-in-oil emulsions with added solids. The experimental conditions consisted of combinations of values of temperature (T) and solids volume fraction (φ_s). The temperature had the values of 10, 20, 30, 40, 50, and 70°C; whilst the solids volume fraction had values between 0 and 0.025. All the treatments had been chosen such that each value of φ_s was used once in conjunction with each value of T. In order to obtain an estimate of the experimental error in the experiment, it was necessary to replicate the entire set of experiments a total of three times. Statistical analysis of the experimental data pointed to the existence of an interaction of solids and temperature and to the relative viscosity being a function of these two factors. A model based on the data has been developed to evaluate the relative viscosity as a function of T and φ_s for shear rates above 270s^-1.