Vishal Sharma , CEO of Godrej Industries Chemicals , looks back at the whole history of surfactants
Five thousand years of surfactants
Vishal Sharma , CEO of Godrej Industries Chemicals , looks back at the whole history of surfactants
To recount the history of surfactants , or surface-active agents , we have to go back a long time - to roughly 2800 BCE and the ancient city of Babylon . That is the setting for the first documented evidence of the production of soap-like materials .
While the term ‘ surfactants ’ itself caught on only after the 1950s , it is common to retroactively use it to describe cleaning agents since that time in Babylon . For a good part of the last 100 years , however , they have done much more than just clean .
While their chemical structure , consisting of a ‘ water-loving ’ head and an ‘ oil-loving ’ tail , make surfactants invaluable in cleaning processes , they now also play a crucial part in many consumer and industrial uses . That is because , as science has helped us understand , surfactants are not homogenous .
There are a wide variety of them , depending on what kind of charge their ' heads ' carry and how their ' tails ' vary based on length , branching , and the presence of elements . Different structures mean different properties . In its simplest definition , surfactants ‘ make water wetter ’ by reducing the surface tension so it can seep deeper into the substrate it is on and can assist in the removal of soil or whatever is on or in the substrate . This makes surfactants quite ubiquitous . Their ' heads ' can be negatively charged ( anionic ), positively charged ( cationic ), neutral ( non-ionic ) and both positive and negatively charged ( amphoteric or zwitterionic ). This is , in fact , one of the primary ways that surfactants are categorised . This differentiation leads them to specific uses : anionic surfactants are appropriate in detergents , cationics in fabric softeners , nonionics in emulsifiers and amphoterics in baby shampoos , to name just one example each .
Surfactants have evolved significantly beyond their early forms , which originated in plant ashes and animal fats . Thanks to technology , they are mostly synthetic today , and some are even produced by microorganisms .
However , technology ’ s direction has been shaped by broader changes
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