Bio-based surfactants have great opportunity for use in a variety of applications such as laundry detergents, industrial cleaners, adjuvants, and oil & gas. Surfactants in these applications can be nonionic, anionic, cationic, or amphoteric. Utilizing high oleic soybean oil as a platform chemical, a variety of surfactants and properties can be produced. While early work focused solely on surfactant use in laundry cleaning and fracking, recent work has expanded functional groups and application evaluations in hard surface cleaning. The current invention expands on Battelle's high oleic soybean oil (HOSO) surfactant technology. Use of HOSO overcomes the limitations of regular soybean oil and significantly reduces or eliminates undesirable byproducts in most chemistries. However, with use of select reagents, a few candidates were achievable with regular epoxidized soybean oil (ESO). The HOSO surfactant platform offers several key advantages including: a highly water miscible (not typical of C18 surfactants) and water stable surfactant; ability to adjust and vary hydrophilic-lipophilic (HLB) values for stain removal performance; and increased biodegradability without toxic or persistent by-products.

Bio-based surfactants have great opportunity for use in a variety of applications such as laundry detergents, industrial cleaners, adjuvants, and oil & gas. Surfactants in these applications can be nonionic, anionic, cationic, or amphoteric. Utilizing high oleic soybean oil as a platform chemical, a variety of surfactants and properties can be produced. While early work focused solely on surfactant use in laundry cleaning and fracking, recent work has expanded functional groups and application evaluations in hard surface cleaning.

The current invention expands on Battelle's high oleic soybean oil (HOSO) surfactant technology. Use of HOSO overcomes the limitations of regular soybean oil and significantly reduces or eliminates undesirable byproducts in most chemistries. However, with use of select reagents, a few candidates were achievable with regular epoxidized soybean oil (ESO). The HOSO surfactant platform offers several key advantages including: a highly water miscible (not typical of C18 surfactants) and water stable surfactant; ability to adjust and vary hydrophilic-lipophilic (HLB) values for stain removal performance; and increased biodegradability without toxic or persistent by-products.