TABLE OF CONTENTS It is difficult to imagine how contemporary industrial society could manage without surface active agents, surfactants. Used extensively in the home, industry and agriculture these substances are a development of soap which had its origins in days of antiquity. Being made from animal or plant fats and going back to a time when people lived in harmony with nature there is a temptation to think of soap as a natural substance. It is the result of a man-made chemical reaction as will be seen below and, as such, is not entirely natural but it does retain much of its nature-made chemical content.
In fact there are few natural surfactants to be found and those that are available are neither of sufficient abundance or do not have the desired properties to satisfy modern needs. For example there are foam forming and emulsifying saponins such as the extracts from the soap plant, California soaproot. Other natural surfactants are found in biological processes that require surface active properties; small amounts are made in the liver and form an active part of the bile salts, and the phospholipids of cell membranes have surfactant structured molecules.
From early times up to the present soap making expanded and developed to meet user demands, to exploit new raw materials and to respond to new manufacturing processes. Despite the huge growth in the modern equivalents to soap it is still the most widely used single surfactant. It is almost certain that the first soap was a chance...
