Aphron is a Greek word which means bubble that proposed by Sebba in 1971 to introduce an especial bubble other than conventional one. Aphron, often called "colloidal gas aphron", have special feature of being able to be pumped easily from their place of generation to their place of use. The aphron bubbles consist of a gaseous inner core surrounded by a thin aqueous surfactant film are typically 10-100 µm in diameter. CGAs are produced by intense stirring of a surfactant solution at the speed of 6000-8000 rpm. Several applications have been proposed and studied for CGA like: firefighting, biotechnology, waste treatment, heavy metal removal, protein recovery, flotation, well drilling fluid, and tissue engineering. It was decided to study the morphology of the aphron dispersion as a mean of providing information which would be useful for stability analysis. The morphology characterization was done by photo microscopy which enabled the dynamics of the dispersion to be observed. In this thesis, the effects of parameters such as mixing time, the diameter of the disk, baffle spacing, the type and amount of surfactant on Aphron stability were evaluated. Experimental results show that the use of ionic surfactants in the presence of the polymer is an effective method for increasing the Aphron stability. Polymer reduces the critical concentration of micelles of surfactant. Experimental data show that the stability of aphrons depends on various parameters such as the disc diameter, concentration and type of surfactant, time of mixing in the aphron generator, baffles position and specially the diameter of the rotating disc. The stability of aphrons suspension generated at 9000 rpm, 150 seconds of mixing with rotating disk of 60 mm diameter was 400 seconds while under the same conditions as above, but with spinning disk of 25 mm diameter was 200 seconds. Pore blockage device has been used for determination of ability of aphrons in blocking the pores of the wall of the well. It was found that the ability of aphrons in blocking the pores reduced with passing time. The detail of the experiments and data are mentioned in the thesis.
