Solid oily soils, detergency process

Solid soils are commonly encountered in hard surface cleaning and continue to become more important in home laundry conditions as wash temperatures decrease. The detergency process is complicated in the case of solid oily soils by the nature of the interfacial interactions of the surfactant solution and the solid soil. An initial soil softening or "liquefaction", due to penetration of surfactant and water molecules was proposed, based on gravimetric data (4). In our initial reports of the application of FT-IR to the study of solid soil detergency, we also found evidence of rapid surfactant penetration, which was correlated with successful detergency (5). In this chapter, we examine the detergency performance of several nonionic surfactants as a function of temperature and type of hydrocarbon "model soil". Performance characteristics are related to the interfacial phase behavior of the ternary surfactant -hydrocarbon - water system. 

We also describe the spreading of a thin surfactant laden aqueous film on a hydrophilic solid, i.e., one in which the dynamic contact angle is small. In such a case, the osmotic pressure gradient generated by the nonuniform distribution of surfactant micelles in the liquid film can drive fhe spreading process. The mofivation for this study comes from the need to understand the detergent action involved in the removal of an oily soil from a soiled surface. This paper presents an overview of our recent work. 

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