Surfactants, also known as wetting agents, lower the surface tension of a liquid, allowing easier spreading. The term surfactant is a compression of "Surface active agent". Surfactants are usually organic compounds that contain both hydrophobic and hydrophilic groups, and are thus semi-soluble in both organic and aqueous solvents. Surfactants are also known as amphipathic compounds, meaning that they would prefer to be in neither phase (water or organic). For this reason they locate at the phase boundary between the organic and water phase, or, if there is no more room there, they will congregate together and form micelles. The concentration at which surfactants begin to form micelles is known as the critical micelle concentration or CMC.
In Index Medicus and the National Library of Medicine (NLM, USA Dept. of Health and Human Services), "surfactant" is reserved for the meaning pulmonary surfactant (see "alveoli" link below). For the more general meaning, "surface active agent" is the heading.
Disclosed are pesticide formulations containing oil-free chemical compositions as wettingagents and the oil-free wettingagents produced by reacting a tall oil fatty acid or ester with an anhydride compound and an amino sulfonic acid compound in water alone to produce an acid amide salt, an imide salt, or the adduct thereof.
Wetting times of the wettingagents were determined by adding the technical pesticide (0.5 grams) to be used to 100 mL volume of the wettingagent as a 2% solution (based on the anionic surfactant activity) and recording the time required for the powder to become completely wet by the aqueous solution.
Wetting Times for a Broad Spectrum of Technical Pesticides: The wetting times were measured for the three prior art wettingagents, and they were compared with the wetting times for the three example products of the present invention.
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