Open Collections

Abstract

Surface tension is a property that defines the energy per unit area of a liquid-gas interface. The purpose of this study is to investigate the surface properties and the process of aggregation of surfactant micelles in detergents. By using a drop-weight method, the surface tension of detergent solutions was determined under standard pressure condition 1 bar. A 100% concentrated detergent solution was subject to heating. Data analysis showed that surface tension decreased linearly with increasing temperature, as represented by the equation ƴ = – 0.1766 mN/(m⋅K)(x) + 94.654 mN/m, where x is temperature. When subjected to variations in concentration, surface tension of the detergent decreased until reaching the critical micelle concentration, as modelled by the segmented linear regression ƴ = – 0.565 mN/(m⋅%)(x) + 61.7 mN/m when x < 50%, and ƴ = 33.45 mN/m when x ≥ 50%, where x is concentration.