  Colloidal aggregation could be implemented in various fields ranging from
purely colloidal thermodynamics to protein interactions, their stability, and
maybe folding. Indeed, colloidal aggregation is closely linked to the so-called
hydrophobic effect for which a thermodynamic explanation is proposed. This
explanation is performed using Prigogine's out-of-equilibrium thermodynamics
which is based on entropy production. It is shown that a likely destabilizing
event could induce a spontaneous and irreversible aggregation of two identical
or different colloids as it causes the desorption of solvent molecules from
colloidal surfaces. This desorption is an entropy production factor through the
chemical potentials minimization of, among others, initially adsorbed
molecules. This may be viewed as an increase of the so-called "solvent entropy"
or "translational entropy".
