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Water-Soluble Surfactants

Technology Benefits

The advantages of the UC Davis surfactants over other cleavable surfactants are considerable, meaning that the UC Davis surfactants will likely be the preferred surfactants in applications requiring chemodegradation.

Detailed Technology Description

Surfactants are molecules that combine hydrophobic and hydrophilic components, making them useful in numerous applications as emulsifiers, detergents, dispersants, and as agents for solubilizing cosmetics and solubilizing compounds used for textile treatment, cleaning, and corrosion inhibition. Surfactants that permit facile cleavage of the hydrophilic and hydrophobic components are of special interest, since in applications such as the emulsification of the aqueous and organic phases could greatly reduce the cost of converting such wastes into useful or innocuous products. Practical chemodegradable surfactants would find widespread use in treating wastewater, breaking emulsions or foams following use in lubricant formulations, improving polymers that are synthesized by means of emulsion polymerization, and manipulating membrane-bound proteins. Ideally, chemodegradable surfactants should degrade rapidly upon contact with the cleavage reagent, and should not require a great excess of the cleavage reagent to achieve sufficient chemodegradation. They should be water-soluble, stable over a large range of pHs, and synthesized, stored, and used without unduly restrictive conditions. Unfortunately, none of the presently available chemodegradable surfactants possess all of these properties, so there is a need for improved chemodegradable surfactants that better satisfy commercial needs. Researchers at the University of California, Davis have identified several families of cleavable, easily synthesized surfactants that conform to all of these requirements for efficient chemodegradation. Some of the UC Davis surfactants can be completely cleaved in a one-step process by inexpensive, mild oxidants in less than five minutes.

Supplementary Information

Patent Number: US6600076B1
Application Number: US1999416094A
Inventor: Abbott, Nicholas L. | Jong, Lana I.
Priority Date: 5 Apr 1999
Priority Number: US6600076B1
Application Date: 12 Oct 1999
Publication Date: 29 Jul 2003
IPC Current: B01F001700 | C07C032325 | C07C032352 | C11D000100 | C11D000104 | C11D000112 | C11D000134 | C11D000138 | C11D000152 | C11D000162 | C11D000166 | C11D000175 | C11D000188
US Class: 568021 | 516198 | 568022
Assignee Applicant: The Regents of the University of California | Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundationdison
Title: Cleavable, water-soluble surfactants
Usefulness: Cleavable, water-soluble surfactants
Summary: As water soluble surfactants e.g. for altering the interfacial tension, interfacial elasticity and/or interfacial viscosity of solutions, disrupting emulsions, and switching between an emulsified mixture and a non-emulsified mixture. Solutions of the surfactants are useful e.g. for emulsification of wastes or materials for recycling, as components of lubricating formulations, for emulsification polymerization and for the purification and reconstitution of proteins in lipid environments.
Novelty: New water soluble surfactants containing disulfide group useful for e.g. emulsification of wastes or emulsification polymerization