Preparation of a new type of surfactant from glycerol

A new type of green nonionic surfactant of polyglycerol dodecyl ether was synthesized by two steps:①dodecyl glycidyl ether (DGE) was first synthesized,②and then reacted with glycerol to obtain the product.The influencing factors,such as temperature, catalyst, molar ratio of glycerol to DGE and the time,were studied in detail. The optimum reaction conditions were obtained as follows:NaOH as catalyst,molar ratio of glycerol to DGE 1.3∶1, reacting in vacuum for 4 h at 150℃. Under the optimum conditions the yield of the finished product reached 88%.Some homologs were synthesized from polyglycerols with different polymerization degree.The polyglycerol dodecyl ether had good capacity of reducing surface tension.