Pre-screening Rinse Surfactants for More Sustainable ADW Formulations

Rinse surfactants are core ingredients of automatic dishwashing (ADW) product formulations, integral to key performance aspects. As Home Care product launches with environmental and ethical claims now exceed those without, formulators require the support of ingredient developers to quickly identify new more sustainable surfactant options suitable for delivering on these criteria plus consumer-demanded high effectiveness in rinse performance. To effectively achieve this balance, the surfactant creator is challenged to replace some or all ingredient building blocks with more renewable, sustainable alternatives. Supporting more efficient and systematic surfactant development for sustainable ADW formulations, Clariant has introduced a new system for efficiently pre-screening surfactant characteristics and relating them to required ADW performance benefits. The process advantages extend beyond Clariant’s faster and resource-saving development of market-relevant ingredients. The pre-screening also provides performance indicators plus temperature and concentration dependent measurements to support customers’ selection of surfactants based on specific needs and formulations. This paper details the unique combination of laboratory methods employed to ultimately select the best-performing surfactant within a product group. The pre-screening study example features renewable substances with RCI >50% compared to benchmark petrochemical-based products.