Where would we be without laundry detergent? Of course we’d still find a way to wash our clothes, but it would take a lot longer and require some elbow grease. Laundry detergent has made clothes washing a lot more convenient for the average person. Within just a couple of minutes you could have started your laundry process by simply pouring in some detergent, throwing the clothes in the machine and pressing a button.
However, it wasn’t always so easy. Back in the days Italians used a sulfur and water mixture with charcoal to clean cloth while the Egyptians were known to have used ashes and silicates to soften water. Soaps were the very first detergents. In 1917, in Germany the detergent effects of certain synthetic surfactants were noted, and this was in response to shortages of soap during WWI. By the 1930’s routes to fatty alcohols were developed; these new material were converted to their sulfate esters. Detergents like Germany’s FEWA and the US’s Dreft were mainly used in the industry until after World War II. By this time, new developments and the later conversion of aviation fuel plans to produce tetraprpopylene, which was used in household detergents, causing a fast growth of domestic use in the late ’40s.
In the early part of the 1900s, the use of enzymes for laundry were introduced by Otto Rohm. Today soap has largely been displaced as the main cleaning agent in developed countries. By weight, soap is relatively ineffective and highly sensitive to deactivation by hard water. A type of detergent we refer to as LABs provided to be highly effective in cleaning and more biodegradable than the branched relatives by the 1950s. They remain the main detergent used domestically.
Note that the chemistry of laundry soap and laundry detergent isn’t the same. People often use the terms interchangeably, but their detergent chemistries are different. Soap is a good cleaning agent, but its effectiveness, as mentioned before, is reduced when used in hard water. Hardness in water comes from the presence of mineral salts. This mainly includes magnesium, calcium, sometimes Iron and Manganese. Mineral salts react with soap to form an insoluble precipitate also known as soap film or scum.
Whether you decide to make your own homemade laundry detergent, or buy your favorite brand at the store, remember you can save with detergent coupons with the second option. Make sure also that your detergent has the most efficient ingredients, and check if your water contains a great amount of hardness minerals. Detergent discount will save you some money on groceries in the end. It is something that you purchase often and need in the house anyways, so why not get a discount?
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