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Detergents and Surfactants

No matter how much fun we have squishing our toes in the mud, we love to be clean. We want our clothes to be fresh, our dishes to be spotless, and our cars to be shiny. We continue to invent new ways to make things clean, and soap was probably discovered only shortly after cooking, as the fats from the food hit the ashes from the fire.

Detergents
Detergents have molecules with one side that prefers water (hydrophilic), and another side that prefers oils and fats (hydrophobic). The hydrophilic side attaches to water molecules, and the hydrophobic side attaches to oil molecules. This action allows the oil droplets to break up into smaller droplets, surrounded by water. These smaller droplets are no longer stuck to the material to be cleaned, and are washed away.

Surfactants
Detergents and soaps are surfactants, short for surface-active agent.

Surfactants have a hydrophilic side of the molecule attaches to water, and a hydrophobic side of the molecule that avoids water. In the absence of oils, the hydrophobic side sticks out of the surface of the water drop. There is no longer any water at the surface to form a strong surface tension, so the water no longer beads up, but spreads. The hydrophobic end of the molecule is also free to attach to grease, fat, or oil on the surface, aiding in the spreading.

Emulsifiers
Some detergents and surfactants are used as emulsifying agents. An emulsifier keeps oil droplets and water droplets from joining together, so a thick mixture of oil and water will not separate. Examples of emulsions are mayonnaise, butter, cream, homogenized milk, and salad dressings.

Soap
Soap is made from a fatty acid that is reacted with an alkali. The acid end of the fatty acid reacts with the alkali to form a salt that is water-soluble. The other end is the fatty end, which repels water, and is attracted to fats and oils. The process of making soap is called saponification. One kind of soap is sodium stearate. Beef fat reacting to alkaline wood ashes created the earliest soap, and it was the cleaning product of choice for millenia.

Types of detergents
German scientists created the first detergents during the shortages of World War II. These were called branched-chain alkyl benzene sulfonates. Like soap, they could take hard minerals out of water, leaving it soft. As with soap, the minerals formed a scum, familiar to anyone who has seen a bathtub ring.

Microbes could not break down branch-chain detergents, so they left foam in river water. They were replaced by straight-chain alkyl benzene sulfonates, such as Sodium dodecylbenzinesulfonate and sodium xylenesulfonate.

Straight-chain detergents don't work in hard water. Phosphates were added to detergents to soften the water, but phosphates are excellent fertilizer for algae in rivers and oceans. The algae blooms deplete the oxygen in the water, killing fish. Phosphates were replaced with other water softeners such as sodium carbonate and EDTA.

Later, surface-acting polyglucosides were created. These sugar-based detergents are easily broken down by microbes, leaving no traces in the environment. They consist of a pair of glucose molecules, with hydrocarbon side chains attached to act as the hydrophobic ends. They are milder than soaps, and work in hard water.

Another type of detergent is a group called the pyrrolidones. These are complex molecules that dissolve in both water and organic solvents.

Additives
Some laundry detergents contain "optical brighteners". These are fluorescent dyes that glow blue-white in ultraviolet light. The blue-white color makes yellowed fabrics appear white.

Laundry detergent may also contain polyethylene glycol, a polymer that prevents dirt from re-depositing on the clothes. This function used to be the job of phosphates. Another polymer used for this purpose is carboxy methyl cellulose. This is derived from natural cellulose, but is very soluble in water.

Yet another ingredient in laundry detergents is Diethyl Ester Dimethyl Ammonium Chloride (DEEDMAC). It is a fabric softener. It is a cationic surfactant that is rapidly biodegradable. It works by reducing the friction between fibers, and between fibers and the skin. Cationic surfactants are those where the hydrophilic part (in this case the ammonium chloride) is positively charged, and is attracted to substrates that are negatively charged, such as proteins and many synthetic fabrics. Hair conditioners use this trick also. You can think of a hair conditioner as fabric softener for your head.

A cationic surfactant will often have an ammonium group attached to a halogen, as in the ammonium chloride mentioned above. Anionic surfactants, such as soap, often have a sodium, potassium, or ammonium group, as in sodium stearate.

Non-ionic surfactants like polyethylene glycol esters (PEG) are used as mild cleansers, or to add viscosity to a mixture like shampoo.

Amphoteric surfactants are those that are an acid and a base at the same time (like water is). Cocamidopropyl betaine is an example, used in shampoos to stabilize foam and thicken the mixture.

Some examples of detergents and surfactants are:

Classes of detergents:

Detergent additives


By Simon Quellen Field
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