Industrial Utilization of Surfactants: Principles and Practice

This book presents, in nonmathematical fashion, the principles underlying the use of surfactants in industrial products and processes, how these principles are used to select surfactants for use in a variety of industrial applications, and tables of surfactants actually used in these applications. Among the application areas covered are: agrochemicals, construction, emulsion polymerization, firefighting foams, industrial water treatment, metal cleaning and metal working, oil field fracturing, plastics, pulp and paper, and textiles. There are numerous tables of surface properties in aqueous solution of commercial surfactants, relevant to their use, including surface tension, interfacial tension vs. mineral oil, effectiveness and efficiency of adsorption at the air/water interface, area/molecule at the air/water interface, dynamic surface tension at 0.1% concentration, contact angles of 0.1% solutions on Parafilm M, concentrations to give 25-sec Draves cotton skein wetting, Ross-Miles foaming heights, critical micelle concentrations, krafft points of anionic surfactants, cloud points of nonionic surfactants, and molecular interaction (b) parameters for some commercial surfactant mixtures.