ABSTRACT
Nonionic surfactants are widely used in household and industrial products as washing agents, solubilizers, emulsifiers, and foaming agents, often in combination with ionic surface-active agents.
Their hydrophobic molecule part is mainly formed by alkyl or alkyaryl groups; the dominant hydrophilic groups are ethylene oxide (EO) chains followed by polyols. The balance of these groups within individual molecules provides the characteristic properties such as detergency, emulsification, dispersion, wetting, foaming, and solubilization. The different nonionic surfactant types have various properties, which can be generally shown by Griffin HLB scale [1]. Correlation of HLB values and application range are shown in Table 1.
