Surfactant: The Study Of The Non-Ionic Surfactant

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2 Literature Review
2.1 Surfactant
Surfactant are compound as known as surface active agent which is the compound that usually lower surface tension. Surfactant are usually the organic compound which is amphiphilic. The amphiphilic is described that the surfactant have hydrophobic and hydrophilic group (Peter, 2002). The hydrophobic group which is refer the tail part of the surfactant and the hydrophilic group is refer to the head part of the surfactant . Besides that, the characteristic of hydrophobic group is insoluble in water meanwhile, the hydrophilic group is soluble in water. In addition, in figure 2.1 shows the schematic diagram of the surfactant. For the circle represents the hydrophilic head of the surfactant usually draw as circle …show more content…

In addition, their physicochemical properties are not affected by electrolytes. Non-ionic are applied in a many types of applications and their function is strongly dependent on the chemical composition. The choice of non-ionic for a specific application is primarily determined by the hydrophilic or lipophilic balance (HLB). The HLB value dictates properties such as emulsification power, detergency, solubilisation , foaming and others (Bergh, 1999).
Non-ionic surfactants is uses widely in industrial production about 45%. This due to its properties that non-ionic surfactant do not ionize in aqueous solution. This because their hydrophilic group is of a nondissociable type, for example alcohol, ether, ester, phenol, or amide. A large proportion of these non-ionic surfactants are made hydrophilic by the presence of a polyethylene glycol chain, obtained by the polycondensation of ethylene oxide and called as polyethoxylated non-ionic (Bruce, 1991). In addition, glucoside head groups, have been introduced in the market because of their low toxicity. The polycondensation of propylene oxide produce a polyether which is slightly hydrophobic. This polyether chain is used as the lipophilic …show more content…

The addition of ethylene oxide of hydrophobic organic compounds that consist of active hydrogen basic catalyst such as KOH, Ba(OH)2, Sr(OH)2, BF3 and SnCI4 (Ahmed, 2010). He used alkyl such as octyl, decyl and dodecyl, C8, C10 and C12 respectively and benzene sulphonyl chloride as the starting materials for his synthesis of non-ionic surfactant. In addition, ethoxyation is the common process that usually used by industry to produce large number of non ionic products. Alkyl which is from group that has carbon C8, C10 and C12 or benzene sulphonyl chloride was reacted with ethanolamine to produces a mixture of oligo(poly)ethylene glycol ethers. Then, the ethylene oxide were reacted with oligo(poly)ethylene glycol ethers in the presence of different catalysts such as base KOH, Lewis acid SnCl4 and K10 clay to produce different moles of non-ionic surfactants. In addition, the properties of non-ionic surfactants depends on the ethylene oxide added which is the average degree of ethoxylation, types of catalyst used and the types of starting material. He also investigated the biological activities, biodegradability and surface activity of the synthesized compounds. From his investigation, he concluded that all the synthesized compounds have excellent surface and biological activities as well as good biodegradability

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