DETERGENTS

A detergent (as a noun) is a material intended to assist cleaning. The term is sometimes used to differentiate between soap and other surfactants used for cleaning. As an adjective pertaining to a substance, it (or "detersive") means "cleaning" or "having cleaning properties"; "detergency" indicates presence or degree of cleaning property. There are several factors that dictate what compositions of detergent should be used, including the material to be cleaned, the apparatus to be used, and tolerance for and type of dirt. For instance, all of the following are used to clean glass. The sheer range of different detergents that can be used demonstrates the importance of context in the selection of an appropriate glass-cleaning agent.

Sometimes the word detergent is used to distinguish a cleaning agent from soap. During the early development of non-soap surfactants as commercial cleaning products, the term syndet, short for synthetic detergent was promoted to indicate the distinction. The term never became popular and is incorrect, because most soap is itself synthesized (from glycerides). The term soapless soap also saw a brief vogue. There is no accurate term for detergents not made of soap other than soapless detergent or non-soap detergent.

The detergent effects of certain synthetic surfactants were noted in 1913 by A. Reychler, a Belgian chemist. The first commercially available detergent taking advantage of those observations was Nekal, sold in Germany in 1917, to alleviate World War I soap shortages. Detergents were mainly used in industry until World War II. By then new developments and the later conversion of USA aviation fuel plants to produce tetrapropylene, used in household detergents, caused a fast growth of household use, in the late 1940s. In the late 1960s biological detergents, containing enzymes, better suited to dissolve protein stains, such as egg stains, were introduced in the USA by Procter & Gamble.

The term detergent is sometimes used to refer to any surfactant, even when it is not used for cleaning. This terminology should be avoided as long as the term surfactant itself is available.plain water, if used for cleaning, is a detergent. Probably the most widely-used detergents other than water are soaps or mixtures composed chiefly of soaps. However, not all soaps have significant detergency and, although the words "detergent" and "soap" are sometimes used interchangeably, not every detergent is a soap.