SURFACTANTS
Ballestra air-SO 3 falling-film reactor system
joins the two, differentiating this class from other options commonly connected through ester or ether linkages. 1
This route is intended to be analogous to industry incumbents. The feedstocks are joined through a single acylation step over reusable zeolite catalysts. The resulting fatty acid furan can be used as a blend, refined into individual ingredients or further derivatised where additional properties are needed. 2 Crucially, the core chemistry is compatible with equipment already used across the speciality chemicals industry. 3, 4
Sironix’ s advances did not occur in isolation. Since 2018, it has worked with the US Department of Energy’ s Los Alamos National Laboratory to expand manufacturing capabilities and improve process efficiency, with current work aimed at reducing energy use, carbon intensity and production cost at commercial target scales.
Additional collaborators have included the United Soybean Board and the Indiana Soybean Alliance, who helped explore applications using both hydrogenated soybean oil, giving predominantly stearic acid, and shorter-chain fatty acids recovered from the industrial processing of higholeic soybean oil.
This both underscores the importance of offering buyers readily sourced raw ingredients and creates opportunities to tune hydrophilic – lipophilic balance by interchanging the furanic head group and fatty acidderived tail. The C-C linkage between furan and fatty acids is achieved by acylation, a manufacturing process that has been in commercial use since the late nineteenth century and can accommodate a wide range of furanic and fatty acid feeds. 3, 5
Platform architecture
Sironix combined the core structure of the fatty acid furan platform into a family of variants that share a common backbone and one primary manufacturing step while differing substantially in behaviour. That lets one platform serve many markets.
Personal care is where the technology is furthest developed today. Sulfonated fatty acid furans excel at mild cleansing and generating a dense, stable foam. Base fatty acid furans built on the same architecture act as thickeners, foam boosters and sensory modifiers.
Furasoft **-LFS( INCI: Sodium Lauroyl Furan Sulfonate) and Furasoft-SF( INCI: Stearoyl Furan and Stearic Acid) are two iterations of this platform with demonstrated benefits in personal care formulations. 6 The platform is covered by patents spanning the molecular class, production methods and applications where they excel in function.
Some properties hold across the whole platform. No platform iterations involve ethylene oxide or amines at
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