Branched chain furan based anionic surfactants: solution self-assembly

Anionic surfactants such as linear alkylbenzene sulfonate (LAS) and sodium dodecyl sulfate (SDS) are the most used commercial surfactants in detergent formulations but can involve the use of petrochemicals feedstocks in their synthesis. Industries now seek more biobased and renewable surfactants, however none of these are yet scalable to the extent of current commercial surfactants due to high production costs and/or reduced performance. This research is focused understanding furan-based bio-sourced anionic surfactants – our previous experiments have studied a surfactant with a linear chain, but we now have access to a new furan surfactant with a branched alkyl chain to improve surfactant solubility. The furan-based surfactants have been shown to have high performance and high tolerance for hard water ions when alone in solution. We will investigate micellization of this novel branched surfactant and study dilute mixed solutions of the branched anionic furan surfactant with a standard anionic or non-ionic surfactant to see how micelle size and composition is affected by the branching of the alkyl chain. Results will be compared with our earlier studies on the furan-based anionic surfactant with a linear chain.