Investigation of Renewable Aqueous Surfactant and Hydrotope Solution Viscosities with a Falling-ball Viscometer

Surfactants are known to affect evaporation performance of solutions and are studied in relation to water loss prevention and heat dissipation. The purpose of this research is to measure the viscosity of surfactant solutions to investigate the effect of surfactant and hydrotope concentration on evaporation.This research is conducted with a falling ball viscometer, used for measuring viscosity and capable of measuring viscosity in centipoise (cP). The surfactant solution viscosities are obtained (EH-14 and SA-9 with hydrotopes Polyglycol P-1000TB and Triton H-66) at different concentrations. The plastic or stainless-steel ball, which has a known density and mass, is dropped from a ball-release mechanism and then time duration from two sets of marks at the tube is measured. Once timing data is collected, the viscosity of the solution is calculated using the equation. After that, the data is collected weekly for evaporation studies to measure the effect of surfactants and hydrotopes on water evaporation. The lab temperature and humidity were also recorded with humidity/temperature chart recorder