difference between soap and detergent
Answers
Answer:
Soaps
Soaps are potassium or sodium salts of a carboxylic acid having a long aliphatic chain attached to it.
They are surfactants (compounds that reduce the surface tension between a liquid and another substance) and therefore help in the emulsification of oils in water.
Soaps are generally prepared via the saponification of fats and oils.
The carboxylate end of the soap molecule is hydrophilic whereas the hydrocarbon tail is hydrophobic.
Detergents
Detergents are the potassium or sodium salts of a long alkyl chain ending with a sulfonate group.
They are soluble in hard water.
This solubility is attributed to the fact that the sulfonate group does not attach itself to the ions present in hard water.
Commonly, anionic detergents such as alkylbenzenesulfonates are used for domestic purposes.
Difference between Soap and Detergent
The key differences between soaps and detergents are tabulated below.
Difference Between Soap and Detergent
Soaps Detergents
Consist of a ‘-COONa’ group attached to a fatty acid having a long alkyl chain. Consist of a ‘-SO3Na’ group attached to a long alkyl chain.
They are not effective in hard water and saline water They do not lose their effectiveness in hard water and saline water.
Soaps are completely biodegradable Detergents containing a branched hydrocarbon chain are non-biodegradable
They have a tendency to form sum in a hard water environment. These compounds do not form scum.
They are derived from natural sources such as vegetable oils and animal fats. Detergents are synthetic derivatives.
Soaps are environment-friendly products since they are biodegradable. These compounds can form a thick foam that causes the death of aquatic life.
Examples of soaps: sodium palmitate and sodium stearate. Examples of detergents: deoxycholic acid and sodium lauryl sulfate.
Explanation:
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Answer:
Detergents are a subset of amphipathic molecules that have the useful property of being able to "solubilize" oily materials in aqueous solution when the detergent is present at a "low" concentration. "Amphipathic" means that the molecule has a part that "likes" water and a part that "likes" oily materials. The water "liking" half is usually an ion (an atom or group of atoms with an electrical charge), but it can occasionally be a group of atoms that looks and behaves similarly to a water molecule (the essential property here is polarity, which is a tendency for an electric charge to be unequally distributed across an atomic bond). Water is itself a polar molecule, so it is capable of interacting with fully or partially charged atoms in such a way to keep them from sticking to other charges.
The part of a detergent molecule that "likes" oily materials is itself pretty oily. Long chains of saturated hydrocarbons (this is typically a linear chain of carbon atoms singly bonded to each other with all other carbon bonds occupied by hydrogen) are the most common hydrophobic (water-disliking) part of detergents. Carbon-carbon and carbon-hydrogen bonds aren't polar (that is, they share electric charge evenly), so hydrocarbons can't accommodate full or partial charges.
Full and partial negative charges interact preferentially with full and partial positive charges, and vice-versa. So, if you have a mixture of oily dirt, ionic salts, and water (this basically describes washing your hands in tap water, among other things), the salts and water will interact with each other (and not the dirt) while the dirt will keep to itself. If you add a detergent, the oily half of the detergent molecule will interact with the dirt, while the polar half will interact with water -- basically making a ball of detergent around the dirt that allows it to enter the water (and eventually go down the drain).
Soaps ARE detergents. They're not similar to detergents, they're not "like" detergents, they ARE detergents. Soaps are a special class of detergent that are made by adding a strong base to animal or plant fat, but they're still detergents.
Just to convince you further just how similar a typical soap and a non-soap detergent are, here's the molecular structure of sodium lauryl sulfate (a common detergent in shampoo):
and here's the molecular structure of the most common soap, sodium stearate:
Both have a negatively charged oxygen at one end (the O) balanced by a positively charged sodium ion (the Na); both have a long hydrocarbon tail on the other (the angled line; this uses a common convention for drawing structures of carbon containing molecules where lines are drawn between carbon atoms and hydrogens are omitted).
As you can see, these molecules are INCREDIBLY similar.
