Author(s) :

Gurnho Park, David Lee, Daniel Suh, Francis Hong, Olivia SuhDavid Lee, Jane Hong.

Volume/Issue :

Abstract :

In modern society, many different types of surfactants fall into one of four categories: anionic surfactants, cationic surfactants, non-ionic surfactants, and amphoteric surfactants. Out of all the surfactants, only a small portion are natural, meaning more than 90% are synthetic surfactants. For this reason, we wanted to investigate natural surfactants that could be derived from plants. Since the commercial camellia seed extract used in this study was labeled as containing at least 90% saponin, we hypothesized that concentrated ethanol-processed commercial camellia seed extract (CEPCCSE) could improve the visible dispersion of benzyl acetate in water. Benzyl acetate is poorly soluble in water; thus, it is useful as a nonpolar compound model for testing visible dispersion in water. We tested our hypothesis by mixing benzyl acetate and CEPCCSE at different ratios, in order to find the minimum concentration of CEPCCSE necessary to reduce the visible separation of benzyl acetate. We tested CEPCCSE concentrations of 0%, 0.095%, 0.943%, 2.78%, 4.55%, 8.00%, 15.87%, and 32.26% (w/v) and found that the benzyl acetate layer was no longer visible at concentrations of 15.87% (w/v) and higher. Thus, we concluded that a higher concentration of CEPCCSE is needed to reduce the visible separation of benzyl acetate under our tested conditions.