Thermolabile Surfactants
Surfactants are often needed in a given product, to enhance wetting and spreading, for cleaning and degreasing puposes or for emulsion stability etc. However, in many applications, surfactants remaining after use of a given product may problematic.
One illustrative example is related to car-washing; the surfactants used for cleaning ends up in the recycled rinse water, and unwanted and stabile oil-in-water emulsions may be formed. These emulsions contain to much oil to be released into the sewer system, and costly destruction of the rinsewater has to be called for.
YKI has developed a new class of surfactants that break down to non-surfactant products after a given time or upon heating, without the need for a pH change.
As a typical example of the in-houss cross-fertilization that so often is the case at YKI, the candidate for use as the precursor of the surfactant is Alkyl Ketene Dimer (AKD) which is a commodity chemical in paper industry, used there in a totally different application (hydrophobization of paper).
The technology is open for licensing. Read more here.