Biodegradability Comparison Of Surfactants And Their Application In Biodegradable Textile Detergent

Currently, surfactant activities have become main additives in textile auxiliaries, asglobal textile products are developing rapidly, there is large-scale expansion in the productionquantity of these additives. This results in an obvious rise in environmental issue due to thenon-degrable surfactants, thus development of biodegradable surfactants becomes urgent andimportant.The purpose of this paper is to select biodegradable surfactants and develop abiodegradable textile detergent.An overview introduce on the current status of surfactants, microorganisms and thebiological and environmental impact of surfactants was introduced at first in this paper, aswell as the degradation mechanisms of typical surfactants. Several surfactants of typicalsurfactant series, e.g., alkyl glycoside (APG), dodecylbenzene sulfonic acid, PO-EO blocksurface active agents were selected as model surfactants. By measuring the chemical oxygendemand (COD) and biological oxygen demand (BOD) values of different surfactants, thebiodegradable ability of surfactants was compared. Then the washing capability, foamingability and wetting ability of surfactants with good biodegradable ability were investigated forthe selection of the suitable surfactants.Straight chain C115EO polyoxyethylene ether, alkyl poly-glycosides (APG) and EO POblock surfactant with low foam functionality was selected as the primary surfactant andco-surfactant respectively. Different formulations of textile detergent were developed, and asuitable formulation with good biodegradable ability was selected based on the comparison ofwashing capability, stability, COD and BOD.This paper is of certain referential importance for the development of high effective andhigh degradable cleaning detergents.