ABSTRACT
Detergency is fundamentally a colloidal phenomenon, and it is also true that a researcher is confronted with the difficulty of the qualitative treatment of a detersive system because of the complicated and diversified soiling systems and complicated hydrodynamics in washing textiles. In Japan, the development of synthetic detergents has stimulated over the past 25 years a great deal of research into the mechanism of detergent action. In an effort to understand detergency better, analysis of soils adhered on fibers have been put forward to characterize the interfaces at which washing is carried out. The detergent also plays an important role in a detersive system and is one of the controllable factors in the practical system. In a detergent solution, fiber and soil have their own electrical charges with the adsorption of surfactant and/or builder ions and are surrounded by so-called electrical diffuse double-layers of the fiber and the soil.
