Surfactants produced from carbohydrate derivatives: A review of the biobased building blocks used in their synthesis

Abstract

This work reviews the use of carbohydrates and their derivatives as renewable raw materials in the production of surfactants. Methods to attain state‐of‐the‐art carbohydrate‐derived surfactants are described. This includes surfactants widely used nowadays and others that have not yet transcended beyond the academic field. Given the abundance of hydroxyl groups in carbohydrates and the considerable quantity of different surfactant structures that can be generated during their synthesis, selectively obtaining a target product represents a challenge. Therefore, this work focuses on the platform chemicals available to synthesize biobased surfactants. The first part of the review comprises a brief introduction of simple and complex carbohydrates to better understand their chemistry. Then, a description of the processes to obtain biobased building blocks derived from carbohydrates according to the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL, USA), and their usefulness in synthesizing surfactants is presented. This provides an organized inventory of the knowledge around the synthesis–production of surfactants from carbohydrate derivatives, emphasizing raw materials that could be inserted into the circular bioeconomy concept. Finally, the current industry trends and the potential role of biobased surfactants around new dioxane regulations are discussed.

Formulation in Surfactant Systems: From-Winsor-to-HLDN

“…Nowadays, with new environmental regulations (e.g., dioxane limits) and sustainability challenges, advances in surfactant formulation science are of utmost importance, including the broad use of biomass-derived surfactants and biosurfactants [111,406]. However, this type of systems are generally surfactant mixtures and will generate complexity in formulations, requiring going back to the Winsor fundamentals to look for computational application of HLDN-like multivariable equations with simple equivalents of the natural substances.…”

Detergency mechanisms and cellulosic surfaces: A review

“…However, there is a serious limitation on using ethoxylated nonionics in household formulations due to 1,4-dioxane formation during the ethoxylation reaction. Accordingly, biobased alternatives such as alkylpolyglycosides are being used in several cleaning formulations in Europe and the US (Ortiz et al 2022).…”

“…Surfactants have been conventionally manufactured from fossil sources that are involved in the most significant generation of global warming emissions (Hayes and Smith 2019). In this context, the replacement of petroleum-derived surfactants with bio-based components has been proposed as a means toward increasing progressively their ecofriendly character (Hayes and Smith 2019;Bettenhausen 2022;Ortiz et al 2022). Besides biodegradability, the decreasing of carbon release during surfactant manufacturing process is nowadays considered as one of the most important socio-economical aspects in their production (Homma et al 2008;Santos et al 2016;Alwadani and Fatehi 2018;Hayes and Smith 2019;Jadhav et al 2019;Ortiz et al 2022).…”

“…In this context, the replacement of petroleum-derived surfactants with bio-based components has been proposed as a means toward increasing progressively their ecofriendly character (Hayes and Smith 2019;Bettenhausen 2022;Ortiz et al 2022). Besides biodegradability, the decreasing of carbon release during surfactant manufacturing process is nowadays considered as one of the most important socio-economical aspects in their production (Homma et al 2008;Santos et al 2016;Alwadani and Fatehi 2018;Hayes and Smith 2019;Jadhav et al 2019;Ortiz et al 2022). As a result, several strategies regarding renewable sources to produce bio-based surfactant and their components have arisen, which are reviewed in this section.…”

“…Carbohydrates are the most abundant organic compounds worldwide and are classified as monosaccharides and polysaccharides (Santos et al 2016;Hayes and Smith 2019;Ortiz et al 2022). Glucose and other sugars are the most representative of the monosaccharides and can be obtained from the enzymatic hydrolysis of cellulose, the most abundant of the polysaccharides (Ortiz et al 2022;Vera et al 2022a,b). Glucose is likewise the most abundant monosaccharide in nature.…”