Question

What are bio-hard and bio-soft detergents? Give one-one illustrations of each.

Answer 1

A detergent is a surfactant or a mixture of cleaning chemicals. These substances are chemically alkylbenzene sulfonates, which is basically a family of compounds similar to soap but are more soluble in hard water.

Complete answer:
-In respect to domestic use, detergents are cleansing agents used specifically as laundry detergent or dish detergent, as opposed to hand wash, soaps, sanitizers or any other type of cleansing agents.
-Detergents are commonly available in the form of powders of concentrated solution.
-Like soaps, detergents are amphiphilic, which means partly hydrophilic and partly hydrophobic. Hydrophilic part of the detergent is polar, while the hydrophobic part of the detergent is non-polar. The dual nature of detergents facilitates the formation of a mixture of hydrophobic dirt particles like oil and grease with water.
-Following are the main differences between bio-soft and bio-hard detergents-
(i) Bio-hard detergents do not degrade on primary degradation and their surfactant properties are reduced upon biological treatment but bio-soft detergents are degraded on primary degradation.
(ii) Bio-soft detergents are broken down into small elements on microbial action but bio-hard detergents don’t.
(iii) Bio-hard detergents are less eco-friendly than bio-soft detergents.
(iv) Bio-hard detergents decompose in a very slow rate or null rate, while most of the bio-soft detergents decompose for almost 70% within a month.
(v) Bio-soft detergents are not very harmful to the skin but bio-hard are very harmful to our skin on long term exposure.
-Example of bio-soft detergent is Linear Alkylbenzene Sulfonic Acid detergent and bio-hard detergent is Sodium-4-(1,3,5,7-Tetra Methyl Octyl) Benzene sulphonate.

Note:
Major application of detergents includes its use as a household cleaning agent, fuel additive and as a biological reagent. The largest applications of detergents areas are its domestic cleansing liquid for laundry and dishwashing. Detergents add benefit to carburettors and fuel injector components of internal combustion engines and prevent fouling. Reagent grade detergents are often employed for dissolving cell walls for the isolation and purification of integral membrane proteins found in biological cells.