Anionic Surfactants

Anionic surfactants are a type of surfactants that carry negatively charged groups after ionization in water. They account for the largest category and quantity among surfactants due to their excellent cost-effectiveness and mature industrial chain, and have become an indispensable "cleaning backbone" in modern washing and industrial formulations. Anionic surfactants can be classified into carboxylate type, sulfonate type, sulfate ester type, and phosphate ester type based on their different hydrophilic groups. Their main advantages are their extremely strong cleaning power, foaming ability, and emulsifying ability. Additionally, the raw material sources are wide, the cost is low, and the process is mature, making them widely used in detergent, personal care products, industrial cleaning, and emulsion polymerization fields. Moreover, anionic surfactants also have good compatibility and can be compounded with nonionic, zwitterionic surfactants to achieve better application effects. However, it should be noted that anionic surfactants are prone to form insoluble acids in strong acidic solutions, resulting in decreased stability; they have certain irritancy to the skin and eyes, and need to be combined with other types of surfactants to reduce irritation; some varieties (early branched ABS) have poor biodegradability and have been gradually phased out. Therefore, the future development direction of anionic surfactants mainly focuses on: high biodegradability (such as MES, AOS); low irritation, mild type (such as AES, amino acid anionic surfactants); multi-functional compound systems to meet the dual requirements of environmental protection and high performance.

As the earliest developed and most mature type of surfactant, anionic surfactants have extensive applications in household cleaners, personal care products, textiles, paints, polymers, pesticides, medicines, mining, oil recovery, as well as pulp and paper industries, agriculture, cosmetics industry, wastewater treatment industry, textile industry and daily chemical industry.

● Household cleaning: It is used in laundry detergents, liquid detergents, dishwashing liquids, etc. Anionic surfactants are the most fundamental "cleaning framework".

● PERSONAL CARE & SERVICES: Used for shampoo, body wash, toothpaste, shaving cream, hand sanitizer, often combined with gender-specific surfactants to reduce irritation to the eyes and skin.

● Textile printing and dyeing: Used for pre-treatment cleaning agents, dyeing dispersants, post-treatment softening agents, printing and dyeing thickening agents, etc., it is widely applied in the textile printing and dyeing field. 。

● Oil industry: Used as oil recovery agents in tertiary oil recovery, for crude oil demulsification and dehydration, and for asphalt emulsifiers 。

● Paper making: Used for waste paper deinking, wet end enhancement, coating dispersant, and papermaking wastewater flocculant, etc. 。

● Metall industrie: Used for metal cleaning agents, metal degreasing agents, metal machining cutting fluids, and pre-treatment before electroplating, etc. 。