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AOCS Surfactants and Detergents Division
Newsletter December 2007

98th AOCS Annual Meeting & Expo
George A. Smith

This year's AOCS Annual Meeting was held in beautiful Québec City, Canada. A joint World Congress with the Japan Oil Chemists' Society (JOCS), the meeting hosted more than 1,700 participants from all over the world.

Scheibel honored during S&D luncheon

Procter & Gamble's Jeffrey Scheibel, right, received the Samuel Rosen Memorial Award from Rosen's son, Milton Rosen, during the Surfactants and Detergents Division luncheon. Milton Rosen sponsors the award to recognize his father, who worked as an industrial chemist on the formulation of printing inks for more than 40 years. Scheibel made a presentation during the luncheon, titled "The Impact of Feedstocks on Future Innovation in Surfactant Technology for the Detergent Market." The S&D Division also honored Sasol North America's Michael Cox with its Distinguished Service Award during the luncheon; Cox, however, was unable to attend. Cox is an AOCS past president and also spearheaded the formation of The AOCS Journal of Surfactants and Detergents.

The AOCS Annual Meeting & Expo is a global business and scientific forum concerned with production, analyses and utilization of fats, oils, surfactants, and related materials. Held every year in a different city in North America, the annual AOCS meeting offers the members from the S&D Division an excellent opportunity to learn about the latest technical and business developments in the area of surfactants and detergents as well as networking opportunities with colleagues throughout the industry.

This year's S&D program was divided into 10 sessions with over 90 technical presentations and posters. Several of the sessions, including foam control, rheology of formulated products, bio-based surfactants, and controlled delivery, were organized based on member input at the previous year's roundtable meeting. The meeting also featured several Hot Topic symposia including Bio-Based Alternatives to Chemical Feedstocks, where the discussion centered around the use of algae as a potential new source of lipids and proteins. The use of vegetable oil to make biodiesel is beginning to have a serious effect on edible oil prices. Algae offers an exciting new feedstock for surfactant raw materials and may help to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

S&D Division Student Travel Awards

Sunisa Watcharasing, Chulalongkorn University, Thailand, left, and Thu Nguyen, University of Oklahoma, right, received the S&D Division's Student Travel Awards, and are seen here during the S&D Division Luncheon with then Division Chairperson Mike Showell of Procter & Gamble.

Other sessions were devoted to recent advances in microemulsion technology. Chaired by Marsha Hardin from Reckitt Benckiser, the session featured students and faculty from the Institute of Applied Surfactant Research (IASR) at the University of Oklahoma. For the past several years, ISAR has focused on the use of extended chain surfactants to obtain ultra low interfacial tension and enhanced solubilization efficiency in microemulsion systems. Extended chain surfactants represent a new surfactant architecture whereby a group of intermediate polarity is inserted between the head group and the hydrocarbon tail. Potential applications include enhanced oil recovery, enhanced cleaning and detergency, and elimination of volatile organic compounds (VOCs) in vegetable oil extraction.

In the General Surfactants session chaired by Raymond Cen of Huntsman and Masaki Tsumadori from Kao, there were two notable presentations on narrow range ethoxylation (NREs). While this technology has been around for several years, new catalyst systems have been developed with improved reaction kinetics and lower by-products. Melanie Sharp from Sasol described recent work to develop a new catalyst with a much reduced induction period. Upali Weerasooriya from Harcros also presented work on narrow range technology and showed that ether sulfates made from NREs have improved performance in detergent applications. Given the environmental and regulatory pressures on nonylphenol ethoxylates (NPEs), NRE technology may offer economical replacements for NPEs without the need for registering new molecules.

Linh Do of the University of Oklahoma, seen here with S&D Division Chairperson Mike Showell of Procter & Gamble, received an AOCS Honored Student Award and the Frank C. Naughton Award.

This session also saw interesting presentations from Japan. Takehiko Miyahara from Lion Corporation presented work on adsorption behavior of polyester modified silicone polymers onto fabric. Silicone polymers have a number of useful properties including fabric softening, anti-wrinkling, easier ironing, and quicker drying. Inductively coupled plasma (ICP) was used to measure the ability of cationic silicone polymers to adsorb on different types of fabric. Results show stronger adsorption on cotton than polyester. This behavior was attributed to surface charge density although surface area may also play a role.

There was also a very interesting paper by Nobuyoshi Yamaguchi from Kao Corporation on development of bleach activators for liquid detergents. It was found that anionic bleach stabilizers like alkanoyloxybenzene sulfonates (AOBS) can be stabilized in aqueous solution by solubilization in nonionic micelles. Addition of cationic surfactants further increases stability by forming anionic-cationic complexes. These observations lead to the development of alkanoyloxyethyl trialkylquats. This novel cationic bleach activator when used in combination with AOBS shows excellent bleaching and sufficient stability to allow for use in liquid detergents.

A General Surfactants session was chaired by Raymond Cen of Huntsman, seen here, and Masaki Tsumadori from Kao.

In the Foam Control session chaired by Butch Dery from Akzo Nobel, Russ Elms from Dow Corning gave an excellent presentation of the theory of foam control and talked about the real life challenges of foam control in laundry applications. Other talks discussed the use of gemini acetylenic diols and silicones in foam control in detergent formulations, the foam properties of sodium cocoyl methyl isethionates in personal care products, and new instruments for characterizing foam profiles in the laboratory.

The controlled delivery session chaired by Edgar Acosta from the University of Toronto and John Billman from The Dial Corporation was especially interesting. Professor Eric Kaler from the University of Delaware presented work on polyelectrolyte gel particles for encapsulation and release of aromatic oils. Using a combination of anionic and cationic surfactants along with a cellulose polymer, it is possible to produce polyelectrolyte gel particles. The morphology of the particles could be controlled by stoichiometry of the starting materials. The release of aromatic oils was measured in different solvent systems and found to depend on the diffusivity and solubility of the oil in the aqueous gel matrix.

Marsha Hardin from Reckitt Benckiser chaired a Monday morning S&D session titled Recent Advances in Microemulsion Technology.

This session also saw interesting work presented by Professor Nissim Garti from the Hebrew University in Jerusalem who presented work on novel nanosized mesophases with enhanced solubilization and bioavailability of nutraceuticals.

This year also hosted the ever-popular session on industrial applications of surfactants, organized by Milton Rosen from Brooklyn College and T.C. Jao from Afton Chemicals. Topics presented included wetting of hydrophobic polymer surfaces, delivery of hydrophobic disinfectants via surfactant-polymer complexes, foaming mechanisms of fatty acid and rosin soaps in concrete and recovery and purification of proteins using 3-phase microemulsion systems.

Next year's AOCS Annual Meeting is scheduled for May 18-21, in Seattle, Washington. Several sessions are planned based on member input from this year's roundtable meeting. Topics include bio-based surfactants, new trends in fabric care, hard surface cleaning and surface modification and industrial applications of surfactants.

Also in this newsletter:

News from the Chair, by George Smith

New Horizons Conference

S&D Meeting Calendar

Junior Faculty Travel Grant

Hosts for the Mixer

Rosen and Travel Awards

Journal of Surfactants and Detergents (10:4) Contents

AOCS, 2710 S. Boulder, Urbana, IL 61802-6996 USA