LAB History

In 1939, the soap industry began to create detergents using surfactants that were supplied to the soap manufacturers by the petrochemical industry. Because the synthetic detergents produced from these surfactants were a substantial improvement over soap products in use at the time, they soon gave rise to a global synthetic detergent industry.

In the late 1940s, UOP developed a process to economically produce commercial quantities of dodecylbenzene sulfonate (BABS), which became one of the surfactants most widely used in synthetic detergents at that time.

In the late 1950s, it was found that BABS had a slow rate of biodegradation that resulted in generation of large amounts of foam in surface waters, such as rivers and streams. UOP responded to the industry need for more biodegradable detergents by developing process technology in the 1960s to produce linear alkylbenzene (LAB), a new surfactant raw material used to make linear alkylbenzene sulfonate (LAS). LAS was deemed to be a much more biodegradable surfactant, and to this day is one of the main building blocks in the manufacture of detergents.

The popularity of LAB can be attributed to excellent LAS surfactant properties, its biodegradability, and its low cost of manufacture compared to other surfactant raw materials. Over the past several decades, worldwide demand for LAB has continued to grow, and in response, UOP process technology has continued to advance. Today, UOP is the leading licensor of LAB process technology in the world.

For more detailed information on linear alkylbenzene, click on the following links:
LAB and Higher Olefins Value Chains
n-Paraffin Production
Linear Alkylbenzene (LAB)