Improvement of Industrial Linear Alkyl Benzene for Detergents Production

Abstract

Standard and specifications of Linear Alkyl Benzene (LAB) compound are essential in the production of most good quality detergents. Pure LAB was obtained by purification of industrial LAB samples, followed by controlling/overcoming the problem of conversion of paraffinic materials to undesirable olefins. Concentrated sulfuric acid was used to remove the olefinic contaminants from the industrial LAB samples. The results were obtained using potentiometric method and color changes in Lovibond photometer. Evidently, significant improvement of the specifications was observed and thus, improved final products are industrially obtained. The new and modified reaction procedure has resulted in a superior quality LAB-based detergent product, compared to that obtained using LAB under the normal operating conditions.

Keywords

• detergents
• linear alkyl benzene
• surfactants