Fatty Acids and Surfactants

Hasten Cleanse—Fatty Acids and Surfactants

Hasten Energy Solutions LLC manufactures a product comprised of fatty acid molecules similar to soap and uses heavy surfactants to capture and break up hydrocarbon residue.
Surfactants cause water to bead and lose surface tension. Whenever you see a bead of water on your kitchen countertop, it sits there as a drop because of its surface tension. It will hold its shape never spreading until it evaporates or is dried off. When drops are on the underside of a leaf, they fall off due to gravity
To reach the surface of what you’re cleaning, the surface tension must be reduced. This is done using surface active agents, or surfactants, a group of chemicals. Water acts differently when using heavy surfactants. When the surface tension is reduced, the water can now spread out wetting the surface being cleaned.
On the surface the surfactant molecules are comparable to a magnet with a negative charge on one end and positively charged on the other end. One end of the surfactant is attracted to water molecules and the other end repels water molecules. One end does not want to be in water while the other end does.
As the saying goes, ‘water and oil don’t mix.’ The Greek word hydrophobic (hydro for water and phobia for fear) means the end that fears water will repel it.
The hydrocarbon chains made of hydrogen and carbon of the surfactant is at the end that fears or repels water. Since the hydrocarbon chains adore grease and oil, they do their best to stay away from water.
The end that loves water is the hydrophilic end and the Greek word philic means loving. Again, hydro means water; therefore, hydrophilic is water loving and attracts water.
The way the two ends function together is a miraculous way of how surfactants work on hydrocarbon residue and solids.

How Surfactants Clean

Micelle Forming and Removing Residue

The micelle is the spherical shape of surfactants. When a surfactant is added to water, the ends that hate water want to stay away from it and do this by forming into a spherical shape

Fatty acids have an amphipathic nature for a molecule meaning it has two different attractions: one is a polar end attracted to water and the other being nonpolar is repelled by water.

The ends loving water are on the outside and the ends fearing water are protected on the inside.

Trapping the oils is done by the micelle with the inside of the micelle being hydrophobic hating water.

The hydrocarbon residue and solids are also hydrophobic and they love the environment created by the micelle.The attraction of the hydrocarbon residue and solids to the inside of the surfactant micelle helps work loose and release it from the surface.

The residue is suspended in the water inside the micelle after the residue has been taken off the surface. The suspension is known as emulsification.

The hydrocarbon residue and solids are trapped inside the micelle, the micelle is hung up in the water, and the residue is easily washed away.

How good is that? When rinsing, the micelle flows away for a clean surface.Hasten Cleanse is sold only as a concentrate for all of your needs in various size containers.

Call us today for more information on our product and how it can solve your remediation issues at (832) 655-7763.

Safety Data Sheet

Please click below to download SDS for Hasten Cleanse.

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