INTRODUCTION
Alkali metal salts of polyacrylic acids are water-soluble, multi-functional polyelectrolytes exhibiting a variety of solution properties useful in laundry and dishwash detergent compositions. These polyacrylates contain anywhere from 10 to upwards of 4000 repeating monomer units having the structural formula: -CHz'CH(COO )-. Historically, the use of sodium polyacrylates as thickeners and builders in synthetic detergents has been suggested (1) as early as in 1949. At about the same time, Edelson and Fuoss, (2,3) used sodium polyacrylates as model compounds in their basic studies illustrating the fundamental differences between such polyelectrolytes and simple electrolytes as sodium bromide. However, large scale commercial use of sodium polyacrylates in synthetic detergent compositions probably did not come into effect until almost two decades later, as is evident from recently published reviews (4,5) on patents
literature. In spite of this growing industrial use of polyacrylates in both commercial and institutional cleaner products, the published literature on the diverse functional benefits they confirm upon the end-use performance of a compounded detergent product is, at best, scanty (6-9). This paper describes a number of experimental studies carried out to identify the multi-functional benefits of these specialty detergent additives under simulated detergent-use conditions, and the likely role played by polyacrylates in basic detergency mechanisms. EXPERIMENTAL PROCEDURES
Materials
Polyacrylic acids used in this study were selected from the range of commercial (BF Goodrich Chemical) materials, whose analytical characteristics are shown in Table I. These were converted to their corresponding sodium salts by neutralization with sodium hydroxide to pH 10.5 andwere used without further purification. Polyacrylate concentrations given in this report are on dry polymer basis. Details on other materials and reagents are given under appropriate experimental procedures described below.
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