An 02020 Japanese #patent by Procter & Gamble explaining how to formulate a hand dishwashing liquid detergent that works better when you apply it directly to grease spots on your dishes without making the detergent look cloudy. They suggest 15% to 35% surfactants, 50% to 75% water, pH from 7.5 to 10 at 10% dilution, 500 to 1500 mPa·s viscosity, with 60% to 90% of the surfactant being an anionic surfactant, especially a mix of sodium lauryl sulfate and sodium laureth sulfate (0.5 to 0.9 degree of ethyoxylation). They claim that replacing something like 30% or 40% of the lauryl (dodecyl) chains with tridecyl chains is better. They say it’s good to include 2% to 10% by weight of a “co-surfactant”, preferably an “amine oxide”, which I think is a quaternium. #detergents #materials
An 01956 US #patent claiming adding “higher fatty acid amide of monisopropanolamine” as “synergistic agents” to sodium lauryl sulfate and the like. I think this is closely related to the “cocamidopropyl betaine” commonly seen in the ingredients lists of #detergents; he calls it “the coconut fatty acid amide of isopropanolamine”, and CAPB is indeed a coconut fatty acid amide. Although apparently cocamidopropyl betaine is a replacement for cocamide DEA (cocamide diethanolamine, which is mostly lauramide DEA), which is possibly carcinogenic? Which seems likely to have been a replacement for cocamide isopropanolamine. Or maybe cocamide DEA was already in use, and he was just patenting an alternative he thought was better but which didn’t catch on. #materials
Okay but actually this 01942 US #patent 2,383,737 by Albert S. Richardson at Procter & Gamble says you can greatly improve #detergents like sodium lauryl sulfate (“water-soluble salts of (...) alkyl sulfuric acids, (...)”) with things like cocamide DEA (“These compounds are the ethanolamides and glycerolamides of fatty acids having twelve [lauryl] to fourteen [myristyl] carbon atoms in the acyl radical,”) which he specifically points out as being easily made from coconut oil or palm kernel oil. Oh, but looking at his molecular diagrams, actually he’s only talking about monoethanolamines and monoglycerolamines. #materials
Apparently cocamide monoethanolamine (cocamide MEA) is still in use as a component of #detergents, as described in Richardson’s 01942 patent. #materials
> In 1787 painter and biographer Albert Christoph Dies swallowed, by accident, approximately 3⁄4 ounce (20 g) of lead acetate. His recovery from this poison was slow and incomplete. He lived with illnesses until his death in 1822.[18][19]
I think a better #Spanish translation of “every little bit counts” (en_UK: “every little counts”) is “algo es algo”, but here it’s translated as “cada poquito cuenta”, “todo cuenta”, and “cada pequeño esfuerzo cuenta”.
In Sustainable Energy Without the Hot Air MacKay explains:
> For the benefit of readers who speak American, rather than English, the translation of “every little helps” into American is “every little bit helps.”