Effect of oil droplet size on activation energy for coalescence of oil droplets in an O/W emulsion

The activation energy of a reasonable order of magnitude was estimated for the coalescence of oil droplets in an O/W emulsion by formulating the balance of forces acting on a droplet that crosses over the potential barrier to coalesce with another droplet by the DLVO theory and Stokes' law. An emulsion with smaller oil droplets was shown to be more stable.