During Day 1 of the CESIO World Surfactant Congress, market leaders such as Unilever, Henkel and Procter & Gamble gave keynotes on the state of the cleaning industry. But on Day 2, the podium was populated by executives from the raw material side of the business.

Zöe Baldwin of Shell opened Day 2 of the World Surfactant Congress with some questions for the audience: “Do you have goals to reduce carbon?”

Nearly every hand shot up.

“Do you have a credible plan to achieve them?”

Nearly all hands stayed down.

“I didn’t think so,” she mused.

Yet, Shell’s customers want help delivering low-carbon solutions and consumers are even willing to pay for them. She said there is a real value case for sustainable products. There is a set of viable low carbon solutions today and partnerships are critical to long-term success. In a survey of US consumers, Shell found 50% of them will pay a premium for sustainable attributes.

“They’re willingness to pay is pretty high,” she noted. “Consumers will pay 25% more for more sustainable detergents and 30% more for more sustainable personal care formulas—but only if your products perform.”

If history is any indicator, there’s money to be made from low-carbon solutions. Native, a personal care brand, developed an aluminum-free antiperspirant. The brand’s sales reached $100 million; P&G took notice and acquired Native in 2017.

How will consumers make purchasing decisions based on low-carbon initiatives? Baldwin said Shell follows a mass-balance approach, which enables existing customers to tailor the bio-based content, resulting in flexibility. Shell uses third-party certification to prove its mass balance approach, resulting in a transparent framework. But she warned that today, there are only a finite number of paths to low-carbon.

“Partnerships are incredibly important,” she added. “It’s not just around price anymore; It is a strategic conversation. We worked with Henkel to build a biomass balance program.

Unicorns & Dinosaurs: Startups and Established Chemical Suppliers

Sasol's Louis Snyders brought more food for thought to the table when he noted that the keynotes from P&G, Unilever or Henkel all had differing views on sustainability.

“How do we meet your needs when you can’t agree?” he asked.

One thing that everyone agrees on is that reducing GHG emissions takes partnerships between seemingly disparate organizations. In this case, the groups are startups (unicorns) and established companies (dinosaurs).

“Sasol is a dinosaur,” he admitted. We have established chemistry, market share and customers.”

In contrast, startups are unicorns that want to make a difference, but they don’t have the experience nor market access.

“So how do we combine the two, without making one of them extinct?” he asked.

Snyders called this a unique time in history. Some companies have committed to net zero emissions by 2039, some by 2040, but all of them are promising to reach net zero by 2050. Despite these lofty goals, manufacturers don’t look at sustainability the same way.

“How do suppliers scale that?” he asked.

But what all customers want are:
• Affordable formulations;
• Products that perform great; and
• Must have zero impact on environment.

“We all are going in the same direction, but we operate in suboptimal innovation silos,” warned Snyders. “Let’s use different partners along the value chain.”

Innovation silos can be shattered and innovation systems can be built when dinosaurs and unicorns work together. Unicorns are bold, dinosaurs are conservative.

“When you bring them together, you get the best of both worlds: accelerated delivery on commitments at scale,” he insisted.

To achieve the unicorn/dinosaur success requires trust, respect and transparency.

“Unicorns have amazing energy. It is easier to direct energy than to create energy,” Snyders noted. “So, if you take a conservative approach and add a visionary approach, it is the best of both worlds. It accelerates innovation.”

This “Dinocorn” partnership creates a positive synergy: 1+1=3, according to Snyders.

“It has changed our culture. When we engage with unicorns it accelerates our progress. The combination of the two brings more value than individually.”

This new age of the Dinocorn is not without issues.

“No one has to die out, not even the dinosaurs,” he concluded. “But if your partner is intent on eating you, run!”

Bio IOS: Kao’s Supply Solution

Kao is one of the largest home care and personal care companies on the planet. But it also has a thriving chemicals business, which accounts for 23% of corporate sales. Hiroyuki Terazaki, Kao’s global vice president of R&D, told attendees that both petrol- and oleo-based surfactants have issues. The problems associated with petroleum-derived surfactants are well-defined. But even surfactants such as C12-C14 are made from just 5% of total vegetable oil and raw materials. One solution? Utilizing solid oil waste from palm kernel oil. The end product, bio-based internal olefin sulfonate (IOS), has a carbon chain of C16-C18. Traditionally, surfactants with long alkyl chains such as C16-C18 do not dissolve well in water.

Kao’s solution? A surfactant it calls, Bio IOS, which contains a hydrophilic group. General surfactants have a hydrophilic group at the end of the hydrophobic group. In contrast, Bio IOS’s hydrophilic group is located inside, resulting in high levels of water solubility and cleaning performance. Kao is already using Bio IOS to produce Attack Zero, concentrated liquid laundry detergent.

“We worked with Novozymes to ensure there is no loss of enzymatic cleaning effect,” said Terazaki. “Our solution is bio-based, has high surface activity and excellent water solubility.”

Problems and misperceptions associated with palm kernel oil were explored by Uwe Halder, CEO, KLK Oleo Europe. In 2021, global vegetable oil production reached 250 million tons. Per capita consumption of palm oil is 10kg, with most of it going into food.

Those calling for a replacement of PKO would replace it with rapeseed, sunflower and olive oils. All of them are food oils and all of them have problems of their own.

“If you replace palm oil with sunflower oil, you’d need an area twice the size of Switzerland to supply Europe,” insisted Halder, who added that any discussion of supply must be based on facts, not beliefs. He challenged the EU Deforestation-Free Regulation, which would regulate or prohibit some deforestation-risk commodities and their associated products, including palm oil. The regulation went into effect last month. Companies must confirm that their product has been produced on land that has not been subject to deforestation or forest degradation, including of primary forests, after Dec. 31, 2020.

Halder urged manufacturers and suppliers to work with CESIO, the Roundtable for Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO) and other organizations to find a reasonable solution to the measure. He noted that multinationals such as Wilmar and KLK account for 40% of global palm oil production. The rest is produced by small, family-owned palm plantations.

“Everyone in this room must step up and engage,” Halder concluded. “How do we rebrand palm oil in the EU?”

Shampoos, Surfactants and Skin Lipid Content

Surfactants are critical for keeping fabric and hard surfaces clean. But what are they doing to hair? Luisa Coderch, a researcher at the Institute for Advanced Chemistry of Catalonia, reviewed the effect of surfactants on lipid depletion. She noted that lipids contribute to physicochemical phenomena such as diffusion, waterproofing, structural cohesion and mechanical properties. Yet despite the important role they play in hair health, there have been few studies of them, according to Coderch.

Lipids are modified by external factors such as ultraviolet light, surfactants and bleaching, dyeing and perming. According to Coderch, a single shampoo can remove 50% of lipids from the hair shaft and repeated shampooing removes 70-80%. But there is some good news.

“Frequency of shampooing does not affect the rate of refatting,” she concluded.

Cationic Solutions for Fabric Softeners

A new cationic active to formulate sustainable fabric softeners was described by Bernat Pi-Boleda, Kao Chemicals Europe. He explained that traditional fabric softeners can contain up to 95% water.

“Current fabric softeners must be updated to align with sustainable development goals,” Pi-Boleda charged.

“We need new sustainable formats such as concentrated formulas and waterless softeners.”

Unfortunately, today’s quats cannot be used without water. Kao, however, developed ester quat alternatives based on supramolecular structures. These cationic materials are compatible with different fragrances, are easy to prepare at room temperature and can be used in unit dose, refill concentrates and refilling stations.

Cationic surfactants provide great performance attributes in a variety of applications, but they are toxic toward aquatic organisms with poor biodegradability, charged Natalija Smolko Schwarzmayr of Nouryon. She detailed the surface activity of alkyl ester amine salts, which she described as a new cationic surfactant family with improved environmental profile.

According to Schwarzmayr, these alkyl ester amines:
• Are readily and rapidly biodegradable;
• Have lower aquatic toxicity in comparison to similar compounds with ether or amide bonds; and
• Have properties that dramatically differ depending on the counterion.

“Molecular dynamic simulation results are in good agreement with critical micelle concentration values obtained using the standard Du Noüy ring method,” said Schwarzmayr. “The results showed that the characteristic curvature parameter of the evaluated surfactant depends on the alkyl chain length as much as on the type of counterion.”

According to Schwarzmayr, the surface activity of these new alkyl ester amine salts suggests that these surfactants can be used in many different applications—even the most challenging applications, such as mining.

Biosurfactants & Enzymes

Tim Staub, CEO, Locus Performance Ingredients, extolled the virtues of sophorolipid biosurfactants, noting they have the ability to ease several critical industry pain points. Sophorolipid biosurfactants are:
• Non-toxic, free of 1,4-dioxane and other harmful trace chemicals;
  • 100% palm oil free, minimizing deforestation and human rights concerns;
• Mild at use levels;
• Rapidly biodegradable—categorized as readily biodegradable: 61% in eight days; and
• Provide a low-carbon footprint.

“Our novel fermentation platform allows rapid scale-up at low capital costs—in 12 months or less—anywhere in the world,” said Staub. “Sophorolipid is a great booster for biosurfactants or regular surfactants. We make great products better.”

Enzymes make products better, too. Katie Lawrence, business development manager, Novozymes A/S, noted that European consumers want sustainable products, but they are also challenged by 9.2% inflation. Nearly half of those said their laundry routine and buying behaviors were impacted by inflation. What did they do differently?
• Reduced washing temperature from 40°C to 38°C;
• Changed washing programs to shorter cycles and fewer eco cycles;
• Moved to fewer, bigger loads—nearly half (46%) said they did bigger loads, while 32% said they reduced frequency; and
• Buying cheaper products (41% changed formats, 34% traded down).

“But 83% of consumers are interested in buying more sustainable and environmentally-friendly laundry detergents,” said Lawrence. “Seventy-five percent of consumers are likely to switch to a more environmentally-friendly detergent if it performs equal to their current detergent.”

Laundry detergent suppliers and manufacturers can help by delivering more benefits in greener, plant- and biofermentation-based formulas, according to Lawrence.

“When we replaced 30% surfactants with enzymes, we saved 24% CO2 emissions. In Rome, that’s a carbon savings of 50,000 tons. The formula also prolongs the lifetime of clothing by 10%, which is a significant improvement in sustainability,” added Lawrence. “Biotechnology helps close the performance gap in green formulas.”

More on EU Regulations and Their Impact on the Surfactant Industry

Regulation remained top-of-mind for attendees and speakers throughout the World Detergent Congress. Kenkichi Fujii, senior director, regulatory science, R&D strategy, Kao Corp., detailed his company’s efforts to create fully-recyclable plastic packaging. Those efforts include accelerating the replacement of plastic bottles with innovative film packaging. For example, MyKirei by Kao uses bottles made from thin layers of film that can be inflated and used like a bottle.

“This has reduced the amount of plastic used in packaging to the same level as the amount used in refill packs,” explained Fujii.

He also detailed Kao’s development of alternatives to animal testing, and how implements risk assessment, risk management and risk communication into its regulatory science initiatives which take diverse approaches to managing each issue. It’s all part of Kao’s chemical stewardship program which includes both raw materials and finished household and personal care products.

“Safety and sustainability are the backbone of our strategy,” concluded Fujii. “Industry can choose mandatory regulation or product stewardship.”

Digital innovations enhance safety data sharing, observed Ali Temara, regulatory affairs senior manager, Procter & Gamble. He reviewed EU Chemical Control laws, noting that chemicals are increasingly regulated which, in turn, forces innovative global companies to devote more of their R&D budgets to regulatory compliance. Some upcoming requirements in the EU include:
• REACH 2.0 and expanded substances of very high concern (SVHC) lists;
• Safe & Sustainable by Design; and
• Ecodesign for Sustainable Products

Data sharing is critical to manage these requirements. But as Temara noted, there is no global data sharing network in place. Nor is there a standard, fair and transparent cost-sharing guidance beyond the EU.

“We’ve moved from registration to evaluation. Now we are moving into restriction phases,” said Temara. “REACH-like chemical control laws are growing around the world. Data must be sharable. Too often, tests are being repeated and frankly, this is a pity. Plus, when new data are generated, it could lead to different results, which raises questions.”

To help with data sharing, Shell, Reachcentrum, P&G and Dow have created Chemflix, a blockchain-based, peer-to-peer marketplace for data. The platform enables users to buy or sell pre-defined data streams or data sets. Users can also find an ideal data partner through broader offers and requests that can be fine-tuned and negotiated.

“We are developing Chemflix so that data owners spend less effort and get robust information,” explained Temara. “Help us shape Chemflix to best help industry deliver high quality registration dossiers. As individual companies, upload your data!”'

Formulating Faster with Computer Modeling

Prof. Dr. Andreas Klamt, Dassault Systémes and the University of Regensburg, noted that the surfactants industry is economically important, but scientifically speaking, it is extremely complicated. To manage that complexity, he introduced a conductor-like screening model COSMOplex, a self-consistent simulation of self-organizing inhomogeneous systems based on COSMOS-RS (realistic solvation).

“It is a game-changing system to enable researchers to work with surfactants. (Until now) too much development is, by large degree, a matter of trial and error,” said Klamt, who called COSMO-RS a highly efficient method to predict free energies, activity coefficients and many related thermodynamic properties based on quantum chemical calculations. COSMOplex extends COSMOS-RS to inhomogeneous liquids.

“COSMOplex reproduces the self-organization of molecules inhomogeneous liquids highly efficiently and is about 10,000 times faster than comparable molecular dynamics,” insisted Klamt.

Jean Marie Aubry, professor emeritus, Central Lille Institute, detailed a better surfactant selection toolbox to speed up formulation. He reviewed Hydrophilic-Lipophilic Balance (HLB) and Hydrophilic-Lipophilic Deviation (HLD). While both are well-defined, they have shortcomings. Instead, he advised using the phase-inversion method, as it is much faster (30 minutes) than waiting for equilibrium, which could take weeks.

According to Aubry, Normalized HLD (HLDn) provides the “effective HLB” of surfactants at a given temperature and salinity. A formulation-composition map coupled with HLDn predicts the type and the stability of emulsions. Furthermore, the phase inversion temperature (PIT)-Slope and the salinity phase inversion (SPI)-slope are fast methods to measure the “effective HLB” of any type of surfactant in water.