ABSTRACT
Oily additives are used in various technologies (e.g., paper and pulp production, ore flotation, fermentation) and commercial products (detergents, paints, some pharmaceuticals) to avoid the formation of an excessive foam, which would impede the technological process or the product application [1-3]. In other cases (oil recovery and refinement, shampoos, emulsions for metal processing machines) oil drops are present, without being specially introduced for foam control, and can also affect the foamability of the solutions. Small fractions of hydrophobic solid particles of micrometer size, such as hydrophobized silica or alumina, plastic grains, or stearates of multivalent cations, are often premixed with the oil because the solid-oil “compounds” obtained exhibit a much stronger foam destruction effect than the individual components taken separately [4-8]. Such oily additives are termed antifoams in the literature and can be based on hydrocarbons, polydimethylsiloxanes (PDMSs, silicone oil) or their derivatives [1,4].
