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Adsorption study of nonionic surfactants on polyester fibers
Author(s) -
Gum M. L.,
Goddard E. D.
Publication year - 1982
Publication title -
journal of the american oil chemists' society
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.512
H-Index - 117
eISSN - 1558-9331
pISSN - 0003-021X
DOI - 10.1007/bf02662263
Subject(s) - polyester , adsorption , pulmonary surfactant , nonylphenol , chemical engineering , fiber , electrokinetic phenomena , materials science , chemistry , chromatography , organic chemistry , composite material , nanotechnology , environmental chemistry , engineering
An adsorption study of a series of nonionic surfactants on polyester fiber was performed to determine the relative importance of sub‐strate affinity in the detergency process. The fiber used in this study was a multifilament polyester yarn. Because of the relatively low surface area/g of the yarn, analytical methods for detecting the depletion of surfactant due to adsorption have to be extremely sensitive. One qualitative technique used was streaming potential measurements. The electrokinetic effect, which the streaming poten‐tial measures, depends on the nature of the electrical double layer at the fiber/solution interface. The modification of the streaming potential indicates that the extent of surfactant adsorption onto the fiber surface is very similar for the nonionic surfactants studied. A very sensitive, quantitative analytical technique, which can only be used for surfactants with an appropriate chromophore, is ultraviolet (UV) spectroscopy. The UV study showed that the adsorption of the nonylphenol ethoxylate onto the polyester is Langmuirian with the adsorption plateau occurring at the critical micelle concentra‐tion. For alcohol ethoxylates without a UV chromophore, con‐venient quantification at the ppm level represents a difficult analyt‐ical problem. In this work, total carbon analysis was developed as a sensitive analytical tool for surfactant determination. Agreement between the UV and total carbon data for the nonylphenol ethox‐ylate was quite good. The relevance of the data to the detergency process is discussed.