Characterization of a natural surfactant from an essential oil from neem (Azadirachta indica A. Juss) for textile industry applications

• Autor(a) principal: Sá, Christiane Siqueira de Azevedo
• Data de Publicação: 2022
• Outros Autores: Ladchumananandasivam, Rasiah, Rossi, Cátia G. F. T., Silva, Rita K da, Camboim, Wilka da Silva, Zille, Andrea, Padrão, Jorge, Silva, Késia K. de Oliveira Souto
• Tipo de documento: Artigo
• Idioma: eng
• Título da fonte: Repositório Científico de Acesso Aberto de Portugal (Repositórios Cientìficos)
• Texto Completo: https://hdl.handle.net/1822/72122
• topic: Surfactant; Neem oil; Bactericidal; Saponification; Azadirachta indica; Engenharia e Tecnologia::Engenharia dos Materiais; Science & Technology

Surfactants are multipurpose active compounds and are ubiquitously present in detergents. Detergent demand spiked due to the current COVID-19 pandemic, further alerting to the need to replace petrochemical synthetic surfactants with natural and renewable surfactants to mitigate further environmental damage. The neem tree (Azadirachta indica A. Juss) is a fast-growing tree that provides a multitude of commodities, namely neem oil. Neem oil possesses insecticidal and medicinal activity. This work reports the extraction and characterization of a surfactant from neem oil (SNO), displaying a yield of approximately 100%. SNO exhibited suitable detergent characteristics with a high potential to be used as a cleansing agent for textile applications, such as high pH value (10.1), suitable foaming of 1.5 cm and a critical micelle concentration of nearly 0.12 g mL−1. In addition, SNO showed a moderate bactericidal activity against Escherichia coli and bacteriostatic activity against Staphylococcus aureus, both common nosocomial pathogens. Therefore, SNO has a good potential to be used in medical textile applications due to its detergent and bactericidal properties. Finally, an economical overview of the SNO production process was assessed, underscoring its viability.