Some application explanations about span 60

What is a surfactant?

Surfactants are compounds that reduce the surface tension of liquids, or liquid-liquid, liquid-solid interfacial tension. Therefore, the surfactant has the basic properties of increasing wettability, increasing emulsification and dispersibility, solubility, foaming and defoaming, metal corrosion inhibition, antistatic property and so on. It can be seen that surfactant is a multi-purpose chemical product.

What is the structural composition of surfactants?

The surfactant has a specific molecular structure, that is, it is composed of a group that has basically no attraction with the solvent molecule and a group that has a strong attraction with the solvent. The former is called a hydrophobic (liquid) group, and the latter is called a hydrophilic (liquid) group, which is the so-called amphiphilic structure.

A hydrophobic group is usually a long chain of hydrocarbon residues, sometimes halogenated hydrocarbons or siloxane chains; A hydrophilic group is an ion or strongly polar group.

The biparental structure of surfactants not only causes the aggregation of surfactants on the surface and the reduction of the surface tension of water, but also causes the surfactant molecules to be oriented on the surface with hydrophilic groups located in the aqueous phase and hydrophobic groups away from the aqueous phase.

According to these compositions and structures, surfactants can be divided into ionic surfactants and non-ionic surfactants, the former can be divided into anionic surfactants, cationic surfactants and amphoteric surfactants.

What is the raw material source of surfactants?

The production of surfactants is mainly based on two major raw materials: petroleum derivatives and natural oil derivatives.

Petroleum derivatives mainly include alkyl benzene, alkyl phenol, α-olefin, synthetic fatty alcohol, ethylene oxide and propylene oxide, etc.

Natural oil derivatives mainly include natural fatty acids, fatty alcohols, fatty acid methyl esters and fatty amines derived from coconut oil, palm oil and palm kernel oil.