Microemulsions are thermodynamically stable dispersions of oil and water that consist of distinct oil and water phases and may be oil, water or bi-continuous. Due to the ability to tune the inherent cleaning performance of both the aqueous and oil phase and control the overall microemulsion phase behavior they are very useful in a variety of cleaning applications ranging from dilute aqueous hard surface cleaners to heavy duty degreasers to cleaning products for fine art restoration. In order to generate commercially useful microemulsions it is necessary to optimize the surfactant and optional co-surfactant packages to minimize surfactant levels and maintain stability over the typical use or storage conditions. In this talk we will describe the strategies for formulating microemulsion based cleaning products, as well as unique high throughput approaches to develop high performance products which maximize stability and performance.

Formulation and utility of microemulsions in cleaning applications

253rd National Meeting (2017)

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