SoylentNews is people
SoylentNews
from the highly-endorsed-by-Lady-Macbeth dept.
Scientists have developed what they are calling the perfect soap molecule.
A team of researchers has invented a new soap molecule made from renewable sources that could dramatically reduce the number of chemicals in cleaning products and their impact on the environment.
The soap molecules also worked better than some conventional soaps in challenging conditions such as cold water and hard water. The technology has been patented by the University of Minnesota and is licensed to the new Minnesota-based startup company Sironix Renewables.
The new study is now online and will be published in the next issue of the American Chemical Society's ACS Central Science, a leading journal in the chemical sciences.
Both an Abstract and Full report are available.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday November 11 2016, @06:38AM
And what happens when this super-efficient soap goes down the drain and into the water system? Does it super-efficiently break apart stuff there too?
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Friday November 11 2016, @06:52AM
Go back to remedial grade school chemistry class.
(Score: 2) by ledow on Friday November 11 2016, @08:07AM
Soap attaches dirt (oil/grease) to water.
It's also in vastly low proportions and pretty harmless.
All dumping ten million tons of soap down our sewers will do - so long as its accompanied by the usual ratio of water - is clean the pipes and put the dirt into the sewer water. We tend to call that "washing".
And any ordinary processing plant has to do NOTHING to "undirty" that part of the water, it just happens. Like when you leave dirty water in the sink and go on holiday. You come back to a solid residue at the bottom of a clean puddle.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday November 11 2016, @09:13AM
Yes, I know what normal soap does. This isn't normal.
The question is will this soap behave the same, or are their unexpected behaviors because this is something new and that we have very little experience with.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday November 11 2016, @10:10AM
Umm ... it's natural, comes from an eco-friendly renewable source and doesn't contain harmful chemicals. And you're worried about it instead of what it's intended to replace & save us from?
(Score: 4, Interesting) by Immerman on Friday November 11 2016, @04:10PM
>Perfect Soap Molecule Developed
It's not not natural, or that would say Discovered, and so their question is quite valid. Just because a chemical reaction starts with natural ingredients, doesn't mean the result is something common in nature. Or safe. It doesn't even mean the original ingredients were anything remotely safe - I would go to great lengths to avoid taking a swig from a flask of all-natural, organic, non-gmo cyanide. Ad that's nowhere near the worst example - nature has come up with some truly horrific compounds all on it's own.
Suddenly producing something new at industrial scales without actually doing an unbiased risk assessment to whatever it's replacing seems ill advised. Especially something like a new soaps, which we know are prone to causing all kind of problems even in their "imperfect" forms.
(Score: 2) by ragequit on Friday November 11 2016, @09:44PM
So... Soap 9?
The above views are fabricated for your reading pleasure.
(Score: 1) by Kenny Blankenship on Friday November 11 2016, @11:37PM
We're going to need Soap 9 to clean up the Gray Goo.
Someday, even Killer Meteors must fail.