The detergent sector, as part of the chemical industry, is at a pivotal moment of transformation. Growing awareness around sustainability and resilience is encouraging the industry to rethink how key ingredients are sourced and produced. Many traditional formulations rely on a limited set of feedstocks, which highlights the importance of diversifying raw material options and strengthening supply robustness.
In this context, ingredient producers have a unique opportunity to move beyond conventional raw materials, explore innovative combinations of feedstocks, and develop alternative production routes. At the same time, R&D efforts play a critical role in accelerating the use of renewable and circular raw materials, with the objective of improving the sustainability profile of ingredients while fully preserving their expected performance, particularly in the case of surfactants.
Linear alkylbenzene (LAB) is the raw material for linear alkylbenzene sulfonate (LAS), the most used synthetic surfactant in detergency. Its manufacture is traditionally linked to paraffins from kerosene. But it can also be produced by co-processing olefins from other origins or even vegetable oils. The properties of final LAS could strongly depend on the alkyl chain distribution obtained from these alternative feedstocks.
With the aim of assessing this impact, the properties of individual alkyl chain fractions of LAS were studied. The consequence of increasing light cuts (C10) or heavy ones (C13-C14) was investigated in washing performance, solubility, viscosity or foaming ability. Furthermore, these pure cuts were blended to simulate alkyl chain distributions obtained from alternative feedstocks or from different co-processing options.