Surfactants for vegetable oils - Discussion at the forum of the Bioremediation Group

Shrihari
I am going to test vegetable oil for bioremediation of some organic
pollutants in the field. To make the oil miscible in water I need to use a
good surfactant. Can any one suggest me a surfactant/s based on his/her
field experience. I am looking for the following qualities in the
surfactant:

1. Cost effectiveness.
2. Past records of filed application
3. Biodegradable surfactant
4. Safe for human health

Christopher Voci
There are several commercially available miscible vegetable oil
mixtures that exist. Preparing a field emulsion is not a simple matter of
adding a surfactant, one must achieve a relatively homogeneous droplet
size (less than 0.5 micron) to prevent coalescing of the droplets
(creaming). At less than $2.00/pound, the commercially available
mixtures are well worth it. See the following sites for info
rnasinc
eosremediation

Dave Russell
Try TIDE-- or any other quality commercial laundry soap.
Failing that, consider lab soaps.
They will be your best bet.
Nothing happens unless the oils are hydrolyzed.

Idavis
If you use soy oil methyl esters, rather than oil per se, you will find it
makes stable emulsions with a viscosity much closer to that of water than
vegoil. We are working with a certified form of "biodiesel" produced in
this region. It is food grade, but still economical.

Valerie Anne Edwards My only experience with surfactants and vegetable oils has been to enhance
the performance of my consortium of FOG degrading, fatty acid and sulfide
oxidizing Bacillus in my Alken Enz-Odor 2, used in grease traps. I use a
proprietary blend of Stepan BioSoft S-100, Polystep TD6 and Stepanate SXS.
Witconate SXS can substitute for Stepanate SXS if its more easily accessed
in your country. While I will not share our exact formulary, you can
experiment to see what works best for you.

If instead, you wish to digest petroleum oils, I have had best results with
a proprietary blend of the following surfactants, together with petroleum
and fatty acid digesting bacteria. Again without exact formula balance, I
like Dow BG 10, Henkel Glucopon 425N or Cognus Glucopon 600 with sodium
metasilicate, as used in our Alken Surface Cleaner 874 or its sister blend that includes
a nice consortium of Bacillus, headed by a trio of petroleum degrading
Bacillus, supported by most of the strains from Enz-Odor 2, especially the
fatty acid degraders. If vegetable oil is part of your mixture, you should
be sure to include both FOG and petroleum degrading bacteria.

I do not believe that surfactants and vegetable oil alone will enable
digestion of petroleum or whatever you want to digest, without augmenting
with optimum selected bacteria, but these are my optimum blends I offer to
our clients who purchase non-formulated high concentration microbes to
prepare into their own blends. If you would like the rest of our list of
"approved additives", including coloring, fragrances, thickeners etc. that
we have stability tested with our microbes for shelf-stability and
co-operation. Others on the list are used in other Alken-Murray microbial
products, were formerly used or were submitted for testing by clients who
needed to know safety at various levels. All surfactants were tested safe
at 3% to be listed, but some tested safe up to and above 30% of a finished
product.