Upcycling biobased waste to create sustainable surfactants for home care
Sofie Lodens, product & project manager, and Marc Evers, formulation adviser, at AmphiStar explore upcycled biosurfactants as a sustainable next-generation homecare ingredient *
Because of the many wellknown environmental problems associated with traditional chemical surfactants, some producers have begun to use biobased alternatives created from feedstocks such as palm oil, vegetable oil and sugar. However, these also come with issues: intensive cultivation of crops, the deforestation caused by palm oil production and the need for chemical processing steps that require energy and generate emissions.
With both conventional synthetic surfactants and chemicallyproduced biobased substitutes being ecologically unsustainable,
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Figure 1- Cradle-to-gate result for CO 2 eq. kg of surfactant excluding biogenic CO 2 uptake a b Recipe2016- End point Resources c
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Figure 2- Cradle-to-gate result for land use( a), end point resources( b), human health impact( c), end point ecosystem impact( d) & comparative water deprivation: AmphiStar’ s second generation sophorolipids vs. non-upcycled sophorolipids
34 SPECIALITY CHEMICALS MAGAZINE ESTABLISHED 1981