SBIR/STTR Award attributes
Current catalytic routes to surfactant ingredients used in the $12 billion U.S. cleaning products industry are energy intensive and inefficient, producing molecules with limited function and high energy cost. There exists an opportunity to significantly reduce the energy intensity of laundry detergents production and transportation through the design of an atomically precise material that can be used to efficiently separate intermediates for a new platform of renewable surfactants with improved detergency properties. Conventionally, surfactants for laundry detergents are co-formulated with chelating agents, which help boost the detergency performance of a surfactant in hard water conditions, but add substantial cost, volume, and negative environmental impact. Through Phase I research, a new class of oleo-furan surfactants were identified to have 500x greater hard water stability compared with existing surfactants, meaning they can be used in detergent formulations free of chelating agent additives. This enables detergent products with up to 30% higher concentration, less cost, and lower energy requirements through a reduction in chemical production and transportation cost. Phase II research demonstrated a new, scalable production process, which consolidated reaction steps and dramatically improved production efficiency. In this Phase IIB effort, a new atomically-precise materials technology will be developed, which is the key to improving product separations for producing the Phase I and Phase II developed surfactant materials. High-throughput screening will accelerate material development, followed by integration within the production process as well as contract reaction work to provide scale-up demonstration. The new cleaning product ingredient surfactant provides a substantial performance and cost reduction competitive advantage by eliminating the need for chelating agent additives in formulations, which will enable substantial market expansion of bio-renewable laundry detergents and cleaning products by providing the function of two ingredients in the form of a single, multi- functional ingredient. Moreover, the new ingredient provides a better-performing alternative to existing ether-sulfate surfactants, which face mounting regulatory pressure due to carcinogenic byproducts, which contaminate drinking water supply.
