As detergents clean and strip natural oils out of fabric, clothes become scratchy and often develop a negative ionic charges (static cling), especially when they are dried in a dryer. In the early 1950s, when synthetic laundry detergents became popular, fabric softeners were introduced. The fi rst softeners were liquids to be added to laundry during […]

Over the last 10 years, MPOB, through its Advanced Oleochemical Technology Division, has put in much efforts to produce new palm-based polyols. The current MPOB palm oil polyol (POP), which can now be produced in pilot plant scale, can be formulated into various polyurethane (PU) foams rigid, semi-rigid and fl exible for use in the building, […]

Quaternized fatty acid triethanolamine esters or esterquats are cationic surfactants, nowadays preferred over the traditional quats because of their excellent biodegradability. The uniqueness of the esterquats molecule is due to the presence of at least one ester group between the long hydrocarbon chain and triethanolamine hydroxyl group (Figure 1). This ester linkage is easy to […]

Vegetable oils like palm oil, being the triglycerides of fatty acids, have a number of excellent properties and can be used to produce valuable polymers. Many of us may not realize that we are surrounded by polymeric materials such as polyethylene, polypropylene and polyurethane (PU). The nature of PU foams and products depends very much on […]

Palm oil is widely used in many countries especially in industrial and small scale frying activities. In 2006, our country produced about 15.9 million tonnes of crude palm oil, mostly used in food applications, especially for frying. The used frying oil (UFO) is either regenerated back to food-grade oil or used in non-food applications. One of […]