Abstract
Three years ago, Christoph Krumm was still a PhD student working on surfactants at the University of Minnesota. Now he’s the cofounder and CEO of Sironix Renewables, which is hoping to compete in the market of biorenewable surfactants, potentially reducing the environmental impact of detergents and other products. Krumm was recently named to the 2019 Grist 50, a list of emerging sustainability leaders. Mark Peplow spoke to Krumm about his plans to clean up our laundry. What’s the problem with conventional detergents? Detergents rely on surfactant molecules, which have a hydrophilic head that prefers to be in water, and a long hydrophobic tail that’s attracted to dirt and oils. Together, the surfactants and dirt form spherical micelles, little suspended oil droplets that go into solution rather than stay on your clothes. Laundry detergents use many different surfactants, but linear alkylbenzene sulfonates are the most common, making up over half of
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