Current Perspective of Sustainable Surfactants Based on Renewable Building Blocks

Publication date: Available online 17 February 2020Source: Current Opinion in Colloid & Interface ScienceAuthor(s): Avinash Bhadani, Ananda Kafle, Taku Ogura, Masaaki Akamatsu, Kenichi Sakai, Hideki Sakai, Masahiko AbeAbstractSurfactants are active or essential ingredient of several industrial and consumer formulations. These amphiphilic organic molecules demonstrate unique ability to adsorb at interface and self-aggregate or self-assemble into different phases in aqueous or non-aqueous solution. In recent years, environmental concerns coupled with increased consumer awareness have guided substantial growth of environmentally benign surfactant molecules often termed as ‘green surfactants’, oleo-chemical based surfactants’, ‘renewable surfactants’ ‘bio-surfactants’, ‘natural surfactants’ etc. These groups of new generation of ecofriendly surfactant molecules often directly or indirectly derived/developed from renewable building blocks can be broadly termed as ‘sustainable surfactants’ which are increasingly becoming popular in many application areas. The ever-increasing demand of surfactants in several application areas necessitates development of many new structural analogues of these molecules by sustainable approach. This review summarizes recent progress in the area of sustainable surfactants, their potential impact and future perspective.Graphical abstract

Source: Current Opinion in Colloid and Interface Science - February 18, 2020 Category: Chemistry Source Type: research