Renewable surfactant alternatives for use in the beauty and personal care industry

自20世纪问世以来，全球表面活性剂的产量不断增加，目前每年超过1850万吨。表面活性剂是一种表面活性分子，广泛应用于家用洗涤剂、润滑剂、分散剂、乳化剂、助剂和工业清洁等领域。美容和个人护理行业中使用的常见表面活性剂通常来自石化资源，预计2019-2025年间此类资源的复合年增长率将达到5.8%。因此，开发强健的可再生表面活性剂替代品将对有限资源的依赖产生巨大影响，并显著减少其相关的碳足迹。仅在欧洲，如果可再生表面活性剂取代那些来自石化产品的表面活性剂，二氧化碳排放量将减少37%。因此，迫切需要开发这种可再生的替代品。建议的解决方案和方法可再生疏水物质很容易获得，因此，人们对植物油和脂肪动物来源的替代品进行了大量的研究。因此，该项目将主要侧重于亲水性替代品的开发，由于其结构更复杂，对功能性的要求更高，因此开发这些替代品面临更大的挑战。首先，将重点放在从生物技术路线中分离和合成一系列亲水头部基团，例如考虑从乙酰丙酸制备琥珀酸酐的路线。在此之后，丁二酸酐，即顺丁烯二酸酐，将与一系列来自生物技术路线的烯烃发生烯反应，形成烯基丁二酸酐。在下一工作包中，这些材料可用于通过聚合各种链基来形成低聚表面活性剂。将研究烯基琥珀酸酐与各种醇，即甘油和山梨醇的糖醇的开环反应，以生成分子量可控的低聚表面活性剂。主要候选人将首先在诺丁汉大学进行材料性能评估，然后在联合利华位于阳光港的配方空间内接受专门的应用性能测试。这些结果将确保材料与目前的商业表面活性剂系统相比具有所需的性能，并将使用已确定的技术路线证明哪些候选材料需要根据需要迭代合成和表征步骤。

Since being introduced in the 20th century, the global production of surfactants is continually increasing and is currently in excess of 18.5 million tonnes annually. Surfactants are surface active molecules that find a use in a variety of applications such as, household detergents, lubricants, dispersants, emulsifiers, adjuvants and industrial cleaning.Common surfactants used in the beauty and personal care industry are typically derived from petrochemical resources and it is expected that the Compound Annual Growth Rate of such will be 5.8% between 2019-2025. Therefore, the development of robust renewable surfactant alternatives will have a huge impact on the dependence of finite resources and significantly reduce their associated carbon footprint. In Europe alone, if renewable surfactants replaced those derived from petrochemicals, there would be a decrease in carbon dioxide emissions by 37%. There is, therefore, a strong need to develop such renewable alternatives. Proposed solution and methodologyRenewable hydrophobes are easily accessible and, as a result, there has been an abundance of research into plant oils and fatty animal derived alternatives. Therefore, this project will primarily focus on the development of hydrophilic alternatives, the development of which present a greater challenge due to their more complex structure and require a higher degree of functionality. Firstly, there will be a focus on both the isolation and synthesis of an array of hydrophilic head groups derived from biotech routes, e.g. considering routes to succinic anhydrides from levulinic acid. Following this, the succinic anhydrides, namely maleic anhydride, will undergo an ene reaction with a series of alkenes derived from biotech routes to form alkenyl succinic anhydrides. In the next work package, these materials can be used to form oligomeric surfactants via polymerisation of various chain groups. There will be an investigation into the ring opening reaction of the alkenyl succinic anhydrides with various alcohols, namely sugar alcohols of glycerol and sorbitol to create oligomeric surfactants with controlled molecular weights. The lead candidates will be carried forward for materials property evaluations, initially at the University of Nottingham, before undergoing specialised application performance testing within Unilever's formulation space at Port Sunlight. These results would ensure the materials have the required properties compared to current commercial surfactant systems and would demonstrate which candidates require iteration of synthesis and characterisation steps as required, using identified technical routes.