The term “surface tension” reflects the nature of intermolecular forces in neighboring liquid and vapor phases. Surface tension decreases with increasing temperature, and drops to zero value at critical temperature. To a small extent, it is influenced by pressure and the interface curvature. An Introduction to Surface Tension discusses the possibility of a significant use of surfactants, polymers, alkali and microbes for surface tension alteration based on work done in the last decades, with new insight on the chemical aspects, especially for gas recovery from shale by altering surface tension. In closing, the authors propose a model based on the concept that surfactant and polymer molecules rotate during the process reaching the equilibrium surface state, which is different from the conventional adsorption theory.
