Process Development of Preparing a Novel Gemini Surfactant Bis(Sodium Nonylphenol Sulfonate) Methane From Nonylphenol

The process to prepare Gemini surfactants is so complex and expensive that the production and application is hindered although they have attracted widespread attention for their unique properties. The nanoscale "necklace-like assembly" which is forming by surfactants and macromolecules can be used as soft templates for the synthesis of metal nanoparticles. In this paper, we developed a low-cost synthetic route of gemini surfactant technology which can be used as soft template to synthesis metal nanoparticles. A continuous mixing-reacting -separating-recycling experimental setup was developed to synthesize the skeleton of gemini surfactant dinonylphenol-substituted methane such as bis-(2-hydroxy- 5-nonylphenyl)-methane. The experimental results show that the conversion of nonylphenol based on formaldehyde could reach above 99% and the selectivity of dinonylphenol- substituted methane is 91.3% when the reaction in the molar ratio of nonylphenol to formaldehyde 4:1 at 120 ^oC for 3 h. The catalyst can be reused and catalytic activity remains the same. Bis (Sodium Nonylphenol Sulfonate) Methane gemini surfactant was synthesized and surface activity properties were tested. The cmc value is 2.95 ×10^-4 mol/L and γ_cmc is 29.9 mN/m at 35 ^oC, generally 10-100 times lower than that of the contrastive conventional surfactants. The lime soap dispersing power, wetting and solubilization were measured in this paper.