Effect of surfactants on the Acid catalyzed hydrolysis of aliphatic esters having variation in chain length of their alkyl part

Asok K. Jana*¹, D. Vijayasarathi¹ and Papiya Jana^2
1Department of Chemistry, Kanchi Mamunivar Centre for Post Graduate Studies, Pondicherry – 605 008, India.
²Departments of Chemistry, Sri Manakula Vinayagar Engineering College, Pondicherry -605107, India 

A B S T R A C T
The kinetics of acidic hydrolysis of simple aliphatic esters in aqueous and surfactant media has been studied. Different acetate esters having variation in numbers of carbons in alkyl part and surfactants; cationic: CTAB, anionic: SLS and non-ionic: TX-100 have been considered for the present work. The effect of temperature, concentration of surfactants and H⁺ on the kinetics assists to establish to probable reaction path as well as the role of surfactants in this hydrolysis.
Keywords: Activation parameters, Micelle, CMC, Association constant, binding ability.