AUTHOR=Tesser Riccardo , Russo Vincenzo , Santacesaria Elio , Hreczuch Wiesław , Di Serio Martino TITLE=Alkoxylation for Surfactant Productions: Toward the Continuous Reactors JOURNAL=Frontiers in Chemical Engineering VOLUME=2 YEAR=2020 URL=https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/chemical-engineering/articles/10.3389/fceng.2020.00007 DOI=10.3389/fceng.2020.00007 ISSN=2673-2718 ABSTRACT=

Alkoxylation is surely an important reaction as it is industrially used to produce surfactants. The actual technology is to convert ethylene oxide/propylene oxide with a long-chained alcohol, catalyzed by a homogeneous catalyst (e.g., KOH). Traditionally, the operation is conducted in semi-batch systems characterized by a low productivity. As the demand of surfactant production is increasing, it is natural to shift to a continuous process. In the present review article, the most recent efforts dealing with the alkoxylation processes in continuous are reported, analyzing critically the results reported in both the scientific and patent literature.