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PRODUCTION OF ENVIRONMENTALLY-FRIENDLY SURFACTANTS FROM AGRICULTURAL CO-PRODUCTS OF LARGE-SCALE FARMING

Exploitable results

The goal of this project was to demonstrate the technical and economic advantages of a new process aimed at producing a new range of surfactants derived from agricultural co-products and fatty alcohols originating from plant. The products concerned are, beet pulps and citrus peels for the production on anionic surfactants, and wheat bran for the production of non-ionic surfactant. All the unit operations of the process have been validated at the pilot level. We processed a few hundreds m3 products in continuos. The technical viability of the process has been demonstrated as well as the economical advantage (few number of processing steps as compared to the current technologies). The main sensitive operations have been fully investigated and optimized. The surfactants produced through the pilot unit have been proven as efficient as the surfactants coming from the lab scale. The best fatty alcohol chain-length for the three target markets have been optimized; hard surface cleaning, dishwashing, washing textiles. Functional properties of agri-surfactants have been assessed, and compared to equal market standards: AIS dishwashing test: Agri- surfactants shown a very good foamability Gardener hard surface cleaning test: Agri-surfactants in diluted form are equal to slightly better to the standards. Modified Lini washing test: the chains C8-C14, C10-C12 and C10-C14 are equal to market standards. In order to evaluate the global environmental considered surfactants, three main elements are investigated : aquatic toxicity, biodegradability rate, dermatological effect. The aquatic toxicity has been tested on the lowest levels of the food web: marine bacteria, algaes, daphnia rotifers. The biodegradation of the surfactants are measured as the ultimate degradation according to the OECD 301 D (closed bottle test) . The dermatological effect is evaluated by the Red Blood Cell Test, taking red blood cells as a substitute for human skin, and measuring the protein denaturation index (DI) and the mean indices ocular irritation (MI0I) values. Test on the daphnia reveled a very low toxicity and no differences between the cuts. Specific chain cuts have been shown to have a markedly better M101 index than the equal market standards. Biodegradability measurement shown a very high biodegradability level, more than 90% in 7 days. Economic evaluation and feasibility studies have been performed. A complete mass balance has been done for each process/ raw material, ingredient cost prices, investment appraisal, variable prices has been computed. It has been shown that the cost price of surfactants coming from bran is really competitive with the market prices even with small plant capacity (5000 tons surfactants a year). Anionic surfactants are more expensive, they could be used in combination with the mainstream surfactants, or be dedicated to niche markets.

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