Synthetic detergent is a material which washes or cleans laundry, fabrics, dishes or kitchen utensils, as well as hard surfaces. They can be of any form (e.g. liquid, powder, paste, bar, cake, moulded piece, shaped) and be used for household, institutional or industrial purposes.
It is not easy to pinpoint exactly when the detergent industry came into being. The first synthetic detergents seem to have been developed by the Germans in the First World War due to the shortage of fats to make traditional soap. The breakthrough in the development of detergents came in 1946 when the first man-made detergent (containing a surfactant/builder combination) was introduced in the US.
A surfactant is a "Surface Active Agent" and it is the basic cleaning agent in the area of petrochemistry. Their primary role is to remove dirt. By lowering the surface tension of water, the cleaning solution can quickly “wet” the surface (dishes, fabrics, hard surfaces etc) so dirt and grime can be removed more easily.
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