Novel Surfactants and Cleaning Technologies

For centuries, cleaning is an essential task for both household and industrial processes, which

requires considerable amount of resources such as water and energy. To deliver a sustainable

future for our society, innovation is urgently required in reducing the resource required for

cleaning.

The aim of this project is to develop innovative surfactants for removal of complex food soils.

Building upon the Cleaning Map developed in 2009 (Fryer and Asteriadou, Trends Food Sci.

Technol.), new insights concerning food fouling and cleaning have been established by the UoB

team in recent years (O. Herrera-Márquez et al. J. Cleaner Prod. 261, 2020, 121254; Avila-Sierra

et al. ACS Appl. Mater. Interfaces. 13, 2021, 35506), using advanced analytical methods across

multiple length scales.

We will quantify the physical transformations involved in a food cleaning process such as

surface energy of complex food, physico-chemical characteristics of the solid substrate, liquid-

liquid interfacial energy as a function of surfactants used, Young's modulus of food foulant,

diffusion kinetics of small molecules in matrix, surface adhesion as a function of pH and ionic

strength, cohesiveness of food foulant. Techniques to be used include a custom-build

micromanipulation, Nanoindentation, contact angle goniometer, interfacial tensiometer, UV-vis,

terahertz imaging, SWIR hyperspectral imaging, confocal microscopy, and microfluidic devices.

It is envisaged that the project will identify and/or optimise a series of novel surfactants for

sustainable cleaning whereby resources required could be kept at minimal level.