Detergent Chemicals - Uses & Facts You Must Know
For at least 2,300 years, people have used soap. Soap and detergent are chemicals that, when dissolved in water, may remove dirt from surfaces such as human skin, fabrics, and other objects. Cleaning a contaminated surface appears to be a simple operation, but it is complex and may be improved with the help of detergent chemicals suppliers and manufacturers. Soaps and detergents must have particular chemical structures to function as detergents (surface-active agents): their molecules must have a hydrophobic (water-insoluble) portion, such as a fatty acid, or a relatively long chain carbon group, such as fatty alcohols or alkylbenzene. In nonionic synthetic detergents, the molecule must have a hydrophilic (water-soluble) group, such as COONa, or a sulfo group, such as OSO3Na or SO3Na (as in fatty alcohol sulphate or alkylbenzene sulfonate), or a long ethylene oxide chain. This hydrophilic component makes the molecule water soluble. In general, the hydrophobic portion...