Essay On Surfactants

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The main ingredient in cleaning agents are chemicals called surfactants. It is made from the words surface active agents.
Surfactants have a nonpolar end and a polar end, otherwise known as the hydrophobic end and hydrophilic end respectively. The hydrophobic end bonds with oily particles while the hydrophilic end bonds with water particles. When water and detergent are mixed together, they cluster and form molecules called micelles. (Reckitt Benckiser, 2012) When the micelles encounter oil particles, they surround the particle and the hydrophobic end, which is the nonpolar end of surfactant, bonds with the nonpolar oil particle while the hydrophilic end, which is the polar end of surfactant, bonds with the water. This breaks down the micelle …show more content…

It is the tension of the surface film of a liquid caused by the attraction of the particles in the surface layer by the bulk of the liquid, which tends to minimise surface area. This means that water molecules tend to clump together in droplets. For water to clean better, its surface tension needs to be reduced such that it wets things more uniformly instead of in drops. This is what a surfactant does. Surfactants reduce water’s surface tension and allow it to spread over surfaces. With a decreased surface tension, water molecules can bond easier with the hydrophilic ends of surfactants and clean …show more content…

Surfactants are the main component that is governing my experiment. When I stir the cleaning agents and oil together, an emulsion is formed. An emulsion is when oil particles are held in suspension. The surfactants act as emulsifiers to keep the oil and cleaning agent mixed such that the oil molecules cannot “clump together”. Hence, since bleach has no surfactants, it has no emulsifier to stabilise the emulsion created and there is no difference observed in the volume of oil before and after stirring.
The bleach that I used is chlorine bleach, which contains sodium hypochlorite, its main ingredient. Bleach cleans by the process called oxidation. Bleach does not actually remove stains, it just makes them colourless. It breaks the chemical bonds of a chromophore, which is a part of a molecule that has colour, such that the substance does not chromophore, or it contains a chromophore that does not absorb visible

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