REMOVAL OF DIRT FROM FABRICS OR SUBSTRATES

A SEMINAR REPORT

BY

TAIWO BUSAYO
FOS/20/21/267017

SUBMITTED TO THE DEPARTMENT OF CHEMISTRY

FACULTY OF SCIENCE
DELTA STATE UNIVERSITY, ABRAKA

IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE

AWARD OF BACHELOR DEGREE OF SCIENCE (B. Sc) IN CHEMISTRY

SUPERVISOR: PROF. A. K. ASIAGWU

APRIL, 2024

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 CERTIFICATION

I hereby certify that this seminar was written and submitted by TAIWO Busayo
(FOS/20/21/267017) in the department of Industrial Chemistry, Faculty of Science,
Delta State University, Abraka under my supervisor.

__________________________ ______________________
Prof. A. K. Asiagwu DATE
(Supervisor)

__________________________ ______________________
Prof. (Mrs.) P. O. Agbaire DATE
(Head of Department).

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 DEDICATION

This project work is dedicated to almighty God for His mercies and endurance,
wisdom and understanding throughout this research.

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 ACKNOWLEDGEMENT

My effort alone would not lead to the success of this work. The good effort of my
Head of Department Prof. (Mrs.) P. O. Agbaire and my Seminar Supervisor Prof. A.
K. Asiagwu for their good leadership and knowledge impacted on me through which
I’m able to accomplish the task of this Seminar Report writing in Removal of dirt from
Fabrics or Substrates.

I am also grateful to all my lecturers for their patience and encouragement.

I wholeheartedly want to thank my parents Mr. and Mrs. Taiwo who supported me
financially and otherwise, may God bless you for me. I love you.

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 TABLE OF CONTENT

COVER PAGE - - - - - - - - - i
CERTIFICATION - - - - - - - - - ii
DEDICATION - - - - - - - - - iii
ACKNOWLEDGEMENT - - - - - - - iv
TABLE OF CONTENT - - - - - - - - v
ABSTRACT - - - - - - - - - vi
1.0 INTRODUCTION - - - - - - - - 1
1.1 AIM - - - - - - - - - - 1
1.2 OBJECTIVES - - - - - - - - 1
1.3 SUBSTRATES - - - - - - - - 1
1.4 FABRICS - - - - - - - - - 2
1.5 MEANING OF SOAP - - - - - - - 2
1.6 MEANING OF DETERGENT - - - - - - 2
1.7 DETERGENCY - - - - - - - - 3
1.8 MECHANISM OF DETERGENCY - - - - - 3
1.8.1 PROPERTIES OF DETERGENT - - - - - 3
1.8.2 DIRT REMOVAL - - - - - - - - 4
1.9 PRODUCTION OF SOAP AND DETERGENT - - - 6
1.10 MECHANISM OF DIRT REMOVAL - - - - - 9
CONCLUSION - - - - - - - - - 11
REFERENCES - - - - - - - - - 12

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 ABSTRACT

Removal of dirt is one of the basic procedures in conservation. In this paperwork, dirt,
the removal of dirt and the chemical structures as well as mode of actions of both soap
and detergents were discussed.

In terms of soap or detergent, it was gathered that a soap or detergent molecule has a
hydrophobic hydrocarbon tail and a hydrophilic ionic head.

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1.0 INTRODUCTION

Dirt removal is the scientific process or method of removing a mark or spot left on by
one substance on a specific surface like a fabric or substrate. A solvent, soap or
detergent is generally used to conduct dirt removal. Most stains are removed by
dissolving them with a solvent. The solvent to use is dependent on two factors: the
agent that is causing the stain, and the material that has been stained. Different
solvents will dissolve different stains, and the application of some solvents is limited
by the fact that they not only dissolve the stain, but also dissolve the material that is
stained as well. Hearst Magazines (1973).

1.1 AIM

The aim of this study is to discuss the removal of dirt from fabrics of substrate.

1.2 OBJECTIVES

The objective of this work is to

I. Define fabrics, substrates, soap, and detergents.

II. Describe the chemical structure of soap and detergent.
III. Explain how soaps and detergents are made.
IV. Explain the chemistry of how soap and detergents clean (the cleaning
mechanism of soap and detergent.

1.3 SUBSTRATE

Substrates are the natural environment in which an organism lives, or the surface or
medium on which an organism grows or is attached. It is also the reactant which is
consumed during a catalytic or enzymatic reaction.

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1.4 FABRIC
A "fabric" is defined as any thin, flexible material made from yarn, directly from
fibers, polymeric film, foam, or any combination of these techniques. Fabric has a
broader application than cloth. Merriam-Webster (Retrieved 2024-02-10) Fabric is
synonymous with cloth, material, goods, or piece of goods. Elsasser, Virginia Hencken
(2005). Fiber is the smallest component of a fabric; fibers are typically spun into yarn,
and yarns are used to manufacture fabrics. Fiber has a hair-like appearance and a
higher length-to-width ratio. The sources of fibers may be natural, synthetic, or both.
The techniques of felting and bonding directly transform fibers into fabric. In other
cases, yarns are manipulated with different fabric manufacturing systems to produce
various fabric constructions. The fibers are twisted or laid out to make a long,
continuous strand of yarn. Kadolph, Sara J. (1998). Yarns are then used to make
different kinds of fabric by weaving, knitting, crocheting, knotting, tatting, or braiding.

1.5 MEANING OF SOAP

Soap is a sodium or potassium salt of a carboxylic acid that is attached to a long

aliphatic chain Soaps are made by mixing fats and oils with an alkali or base. They
have been around for hundreds of years. Initially, they were made using ashes with
animal fact. To produce superior quality soaps, nowadays, palm, caster, coconut, and
olive oils are used in soap making.

1.6 MEANING OF DETERGENT

Detergents are usually made of sodium salts of long alkyl chains that terminate with a
sulfonate group. Detergents are either sodium salt of alkyl hydrogen sulfates or sodium
salt of long chain alkyl benzene sulphonic acids. Like soaps, they contain both iconic
groups and non-iconic groups. Sulphonate groups or sulfate groups are iconic and
long-chain hydrocarbons are the non-iconic groups.

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1.7 DETERGENCY
Detergency is the theory and practice of dirt removal from solid surfaces by surface
chemical means. Soaps have been used as detergents for many centuries. Soaps
normally consist of the Sodium or Potassium salts of various long chin fatty-acids and
is prepared by the saponification of glyceride oils and fats. (eg. Palm oil) with NaOH
or KOH, given glycerol is by-product.
CH2COOR CH2OH + RCOONa

CHCOOR1 +3NaOH = CHOH + R1COONa

CH2COOR11 CH2OH + R11COONa

Fat Glycerol Soap

Soap is a good detergent but suffers from two major drawbacks:

a) It does not function well in acid solutions because of the formation of

insoluble fatty acid.
b) It forms insoluble precipitates hence, a scum with the Ca 2+ or Mg2+ ions in
hard water.

Additives such as Sodium Carbonates, Phosphate etc., help to offset these effects.

However, soap has been partly superseded using synthetic (‘soapless’) detergents,
which do not suffer to the same extent from the above disadvantages. The alkyl
Sulphates, alkyl-aryl Sulphonates, and non-iconic polyethylene oxide derivatives are
about the most important.

1.8 MECHAISM OF DETERGENCY

1.8.1 Properties of detergent

A good detergent should possess the following properties:

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 I. Good wetting ability to enable it to make close contact with the substrate
(surface to be cleaned).
II. Ability to remove or help to remove dirt into the bulk of the liquid.
III. Ability to solubilize or to dispense removed dirt and to prevent it from being
redeposited on the cleaned surface or from forming a scum.

The solid surface to be cleaned may be a hard surface (e.g. Glass, metal, plastic,
ceramics) or fibrous (e.g. Wool, cotton, synthetic fibres) or a part of the body (skin,
hair, teeth). The dirt may be liquid or solid or both and may originate from skin, food,
or the atmosphere.

1.8.2 Dirt Removal

The removal of solid dirt can be understood in terms of the surface-energy changes
involved. The work of adhesion between a dirt particle and a solid surface (Figure 1) is

given by WSD = γ DW +γ SW –γ SD

Water

Dirt γ SD γ DW
γ SW
Cold
Figure 1 Mechanism of dirt Removal

The effect of the detergent is to lower γ DW and γ SW, so as to decrease WSD and increase
the ease with which the dirt particle can be detached by mechanical action. The fluid
dirt (oil or grease) can be treated as a contact angle (𝜃) phenomenon. The added
detergent lowers the contact angle at the triple solid-oil-water boundary. If 𝜃 = 0, the

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oil will be detached spontaneously from the solid substrate. If 0 < 𝜃 < 90֯ as in Figure
2 (1b), the oil can be removed entirely by mechanical means; but if 90֯ < 𝜃 <180֯ as in
Figure 2 (2b), only part of the oil can be detached by mechanical means, and some will
remain attached to the solid substrate.

From the above consideration, surfactant that absorb at solid-water and dirt-water
interface will be the best detergent. Adsorption at air-water water interface with the
consequent lowering of surface tension and foaming is not necessarily an indication of
detergent effectiveness. For instance, non-iconic detergents usually have excellent
detergent action yet are poor foaming agents; the later properties have, no
psychological ground, restricted their acceptance for household usage. The most
successful detergents are those foaming micelles ad this earlier led to the view that
micelles are directly involved in detergent action, actual detergent action depends on
the concentration of un-associated surfactants practically unaffected by the presence of
micelles (except as a reservoir for replenishing the unassociated surfactant absorbed
from solution).

Figure 2 Detachment of Oil from solid surface: Effect of detergent.

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1.9 PRODUCTION OF SOAP AND DETERGENTS

Strictly a detergent is a cleaning agent that will remove grease and grime from surface.
However, it is more common for liquid cleaning agents to be called detergents and
solids to be called soaps. Soaps and detergents are used on an enormous scale both in
the home and in industry. Soap has a very long history while detergents somewhat
shorter.

Evaporating basin
Mixture of an oil and Sodium
Hydroxide solution

Boiling water
Heat
Figure 3. A simple way of making soap.

You can make soap easily in the laboratory. All you have to do is to heat a fat and oil
with sodium hydroxide solution. A suitable apparatus is shown in figure 3. after a few
minutes, and continuous stirring, the oil and water layers merge and thicken. If all
goes well, the surface will begin to cake and on cooling, you will begin to obtain a
yellow solid. This is soap, although it is likely to be impure. For example, it may
contain unreacted alkali.
Essentially, the same process has been used in industry to make soap, although much
greater care has been taken with the proportions of the ingredients that are mixed, the
amount of heat supplied, and the removal of impurities. Also, many soaps have
perfumes added, together with chemicals that improve their texture.
The reaction that takes place in soap making is called saponification. The alkali breaks
the glyceride molecules into glycerol and anions of the fatty acids. The glycerol is
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helpful in that it gives soap a pleasant feel. The solid soap is a salt made between the
anions and sodium ions from the sodium hydroxide.

COO-
A soap molecule

OSO3
A detergent molecule without a benzene ring. It is an alkyl sulphonate.

SO3

A detergent molecule with a benzene ring. It is an alkylbenzene sulphonate.

Figure 4. Soap and detergent molecules have a hydrogen tail and an iconic head. Soaps
have -COO group as the iconic head, which gives a precipitate with hard water.
Sulphonate groups do not precipitate.

Sodium stearate is a soap. Other glycerides can be saponified in a similar manner. If

sodium hydroxide is used, the resulting soap is fairly hard when it has been dried. If
potassium hydroxide is used, the soap is softer.

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A liquid detergent is made by a totally different method. Instead of having a carboxylic
acid group on the end of a hydrocarbon chain, a sulphonate group is usually present. In
some types, the sulphate is attached to a benzene ring on the end of the chain. Figure 4
shows the two varieties.
It is extremely difficult to make the long hydrocarbon chains except through
polymerization reactions. This is why detergents were not widely available until the
1950s after polymer science had become quite sophisticated. The reason why
detergents are so useful is that they do not give precipitates with metal ions such as
Na+, K+, Ca 2+
, or Mg2+. The lack of precipitate with Ca 2+
and Mg2+ is essentially
important. These icons are responsible for the hardness of water. Ordinary soap gives a
precipitate with hard water; this is ‘scum’. Detergents do not give a scum even in the
hardest of water areas.
In the past, detergents have gained a bad reputation for causing pollution of rivers and
waterways. The early polymer chains used for detergent manufacture suffered a great
deal of branching (Figure 5). The hydrocarbon side chains did not interfere with the
cleaning power of the detergent, but they did prevent bacteria from attacking and
breaking the chains. This meant that detergent molecules degraded very slowly. Now
the amount of branching can be kept to a minimum. Unbranched chains are much
more appetizing to bacteria, so the detergents are more easily biodegraded.

COO-

Figure 5. Soap or detergent molecule with branched hydrocarbon tails can be caused
by great deal of pollution.
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1.10 MECHANISM OF DIRT REMOVAL
The cleaning action of both soap and detergent is explained below with a simplified
diagram of each type of molecule. They are diagrammatically presented as:

Uncharged hydrocarbon Charged (iconic)

Tail head

Figure 6. mechanism of cleaning (detergent)

This highlights the key features of the molecules; they have an uncharged hydrocarbon
tail, and a charged (iconic) head. (The heads have been shown to carry a negative
charge; in practice, positively charged heads are also possible). Hydrogen tail is likely
to be hydrophobic (water hating), and the head hydrophilic (water loving). Water
molecules cannot solvate hydrocarbons efficiently, but they can solvate ions. On the
other hand, grease and dirt is mainly organic in nature, so the tails will be able to mix
happily with it. There is nothing to be gained by the iconic heads entering a wall of
grease when they can be solvated by water molecules.

If a little washing-up liquid of water is dropped, the detergent spreads out across the
surface and some mixes into the body of the water. By adding more detergents comes

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a point at which the molecules gather into clumps called micelles (Figure 6). The tails
stick inwards into the roughly spherical balls and the heads stick outwards into the
water (where they can be solvated). Suppose there is a plate with a layer of grease on it
is put into the solution. Tails of some detergent molecules will attach themselves to the
grease. If the water is agitated slightly, the grease tends to lift off and fragment. This
gives other detergent molecules the opportunity to connect to the grease particles.
Shortly, the solution contains small globules of grease surrounded by detergent
molecules. The attraction of the water molecules for the iconic heads holds the
globules in solution. The electric charge on the heads means that two globules
approaching one another are repelled and the layer of grease cannot reform. The result
is a clean plate and a solution containing the grease, which can be thrown away.

Liquid detergents are one class of a wide range of compounds called surfactants.
Surfactants change the properties of surfaces. For example, water will not wet the
surface of grease or oil; they remain as two separate layers. Detergent molecules allow
the two to mix by changing the behaviour of the surfaces. (Technically, it is said that
detergent reduce the interfacial surface tension).

Other surfactants are used in stabilizing foams, such as those used in firefighting and
in extraction of metals by loam flotation. They can also be used to destabilize foams.
Many cosmetics and paints have surfactants added to stabilize gels and emulsion.

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 CONCLUSION

Fabric based textile products as well as substrates are exposed to various external
factors during exploitation period. One of the most common significant influences of
washing (removal of dirt). This paper researched the mechanism of dirt removal as
well as the methods or processes involved in the making of soap and detergents.

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