ABSTRACT
Acknowledgments .......................................................................................................................... 135 References ...................................................................................................................................... 135
Surfactants, particularly anionic surfactants, have been important to society for many millennia. Surfactants are the most important component of several consumer goods such as laundry detergents, hair shampoos, hard surface cleaners, and industrial cleaners. Laundry detergents are the largest market for anionic surfactants. The needs of the laundry cleaning market have clearly played a key role in shaping the changes that have occurred over the past century in anionic surfactant technology including alcohol sulfates, which are half esters of sulfuric acid derived from long-chain alcohols. These alcohols are produced from both natural and synthetic raw materials today. It is easy to understand why laundry detergents have such a strong in uence on the surfactant industry when considering the total cleaning product market is a $60 billion global business. Laundry cleaning products command the largest portion of this market globally. Anionic surfactants are the largest component in laundry detergent formulations. As a result, surfactant worldwide consumption in all markets was a staggering 22+ billion pounds by the year 20001 with a large portion attributed to laundry and cleaning products for the home. Detergent alcohols accounted for over 6 billion pounds a year by 2005.2 The four big alcohol producers’—Shell, Procter & Gamble (P&G), Sasol,
118 Handbook of Detergents/Part F: Production
and Cognis-combined supply is more than half the world volume of alcohol capacity as shown in Figure 6.1.
