Influence of alcohol CO-surfactants on the interfacial tensions of alkylglycoside surfactant formulations vs. n-octane

Alkylpolyglucosides (APG) surfactants were formulated with various alcohols as co-surfactants in aqueous salt solutions to attain ultra-low interfacial tensions (IFT) vs. n-octane. With different commercially available APG products and one pure APG, a larger alkyl chain in the commercial APG led to a lower IFT (as measured by the spinning drop technique. Various types of alcohols, including aliphatic chain, branched and ring structured alcohols of varying length and aromatic alcohols with and without aliphatic side chains were examined as co-surfactants. The addition of any alcohol as a co-surfactant significantly lowered the IFT. The influence of the concentration of APG and alcohol, the APG/alcohol ratio, salt concentration, temperature, and other oil types were studied. These tests also demonstrated the unusual property of these APG systems that their IFT behavior is largely independent of salt concentration and temperature. This is an abstract of a paper presented at the 227th ACS National Meeting (Anaheim, CA 3/28/2004-4/1/2004).