Current perspective of sustainable surfactants based on renewable building blocks

Surfactants are active or essential ingredient of several industrial and consumer formulations. These amphiphilic organic molecules demonstrate unique ability to adsorb at the interface and self-aggregate or self-assemble into different phases in aqueous or nonaqueous solution. In recent years, environmental concerns coupled with increased consumer awareness have guided substantial growth of environmentally benign surfactant molecules often termed as ‘green surfactants’, oleochemical-based surfactants', ‘renewable surfactants’ ‘biosurfactants’, ‘natural surfactants’, and so on. These groups of new generation of eco-friendly surfactant molecules often directly or indirectly derived/developed from renewable building blocks can be broadly termed as ‘sustainable surfactants’ which are increasingly becoming popular in many application areas. The ever-increasing demand of surfactants in several application areas necessitates development of many new structural analogs of these molecules by sustainable approach. This review summarizes recent progress in the area of sustainable surfactants, their potential impact, and future perspective.