Speciality Chemicals Magazine NOV / DEC 2025 | Page 36

Dishtroyer washing-up liquid Shiny Star bathroom & kitchen spray( acid)

Grease Police bathroom and kitchen spray( alkaline)

pH 4.3 pH 3.3 pH 10.3

Figure 3- Ingredients in AmphiStar formulations

co-locating a production facility with a factory manufacturing potato products could provide an easy, reliable and low-cost source of feedstock while relieving the factory’ s owners of the need to dispose of its potato peelings. The feasibility of this approach depends on the volume and consistency of the waste stream available, but, where it is possible, it represents a strong circular-economy advantage.

Avoiding greenwashing

To determine how well AmphiStar’ s upcycled biosurfactants met its sustainability goals, a third party, cradle-to-gate lifecycle analysis( LCA) was performed to compare their impact to other surfactants and determine areas for improvement.

The LCA examined the cradle-togate global warming potential( GWP) of our upcycled biosurfactants and confirmed it produced only a fraction of the emissions of palm-derived surfactants: 0.74 kg CO 2

-eq. compared to 3.05 for first-generation sophorolipid biosurfactants produced with virgin crops, 2.4 for alkyl polyglucosides( APGs) and 2.9 kg for sodium laureth sulphate( SLES), to give a few examples( Figure 1).

Another clear finding was that there was a clear difference in several impact categories when comparing AmphiStar’ s upcycled sophorolipids to non-upcycled sophorolipids. Land use, damage to resource availability, human health impact, biodiversity impact and water deprivation potential were, respectively, seven, 3.5, 5.5, 15 and 18 times lower( Figure 2).

Molecules on the market

In 2024, AmphiStar launched the AmphiClean ** and AmphiCare ** product lines. The former were developed for use as biosurfactant ingredients in home care prototype formulations, the latter for use in personal care prototype formulations, of which the first formulation prototype examples were launched early 2025.

AmphiClean A( Acidic Sophorolipid) and L( Lactonic Sophorolipid), are AmphiStar’ s first products designed specifically for incorporation into a range of home care applications. The launch offered brands a more sustainable surfactant ingredient to meet growing consumer demands for cleaning products that reduce environmental harm.

Testing prototypes

To test AmphiClean’ s suitability across home care products, different prototype formulations were created in order to further assess AmphiClean’ s performance in common household cleaning products. The formulations were designed from scratch, based on studies of the interactions between the ingredients, to maximise performance while keeping inputs responsibly sourced and biobased where possible.

It should be noted that the designed prototype formulations used do not yet contain upcycled biosurfactants exclusively. While this is a long-term aim, for now the formulations contain responsibly sourced palm-based( first generation) biosurfactants in combination with AmphiClean.

36 SPECIALITY CHEMICALS MAGAZINE ESTABLISHED 1981