Detergency of mixed soil removal using methyl ester sulfonate and alcohol ethoxylate

Abstract

The objective of this research was to investigate the detergency performance for mixed soil removal using mixed surfactants of methyl ester sulfonate (MES), anionic surfactant and alcohol ethoxylate(AE), nonionic surfactant. Pure cotton and polyester were used in this study. Motor oil and kaolinite were used as models of oily soil and particulate soil, respectively. The highest detergency performance was obtained at 0.3% w/v total surfactant concentration of the selected formulation (0.03% M E S and 0.27% A E 7). The selected formulation also gave a higher percentage of both oily and particulate soil rem ovals than any single surfactant system. The results showed that the selected formulation gave the highest percentages of oily soil removal on cotton and polyester fabric of 72.5% and 64.7%, respectively. Due to the hydrophobicity of the polyester, oil tends to attach on the polyester more strongly than the cotton fabric. Hence, the oily soil on the cotton was removed easily than that on the polyester. In the case of particulate soil, the commercial detergent provided the maximum detergency performance of 90.1% on the polyester fabric which was much higher than the selected formulation. The reason is the commercial detergent contains a high fraction of anionic surfactant when compared with the selected formulation. Furthermore, the re-deposition of removed soils was decreased with increasing total surfactant concentration.