Does hard water effect only foam or cleaning power of surfactants like SLS too? - Chemists Corner

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Does hard water effect only foam or cleaning power of surfactants like SLS too?

Posted by Abdullah on June 15, 2022 at 2:26 am

Some surfactants like SLS that are sensitive to hard water and produce less foam in hard water, will they also have less cleaning power too?

does hard water effect only foam or both foam and cleaning power of surfactants that are sensitive to hard water like SLS?

Abdullah replied 2 years, 5 months ago 3 Members · 4 Replies
4 Replies

ketchito

Member
June 15, 2022 at 2:52 pm

@Abdullah If the surfactant is affected by hard water, the loss in foam correlates with decreased solubility and hence, interfacial activity (and detergency).
Abdullah

Member
June 15, 2022 at 3:33 pm

ketchito said:

@Abdullah If the surfactant is affected by hard water, the loss in foam correlates with decreased solubility and hence, interfacial activity (and detergency).

Thanks a lot
chemicalmatt

Member
June 17, 2022 at 8:44 pm

@Abdullah main exclusion hard water brings to cleaning products is the redeposition of soils. That’s why you need a lot of EDTA in use when your market will have hard water or they will be rinsing a long time. Those minerals do affect foam build as @ketchito mentioned.
Abdullah

Member
June 18, 2022 at 8:11 am

@chemicalmatt thanks

Does this redeposition happen during washing washing with hard water or rinsing with hard water?

Water hardness here is around 700 TDS. During shampooing, 3g for men and 15g shampoo for women creates enough foam.
What percentage of EDTA in shampoo enough for this purpose?
I am using 0.1% tetrasodium EDTA currently.

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