Surface and thermodynamics properties of commercial fatty-alcohol ethoxylate surfactants

[Display omitted] •The analysis of the surface properties of commercial surfactants is more difficult when compared with pure surfactants.•The longer the alkyl chain of commercial fatty-alcohol ethoxylate surfactants (FAEs) is, the lower the CMC is.•The lower the degree of ethoxylation of FAEs is, the lower the CMC is.•Enthalpies and entropies of micellization and adsorption of FAEs are higher with the increase of the degree of ethoxylation.•Enthalpy and entropy of micellization of FAEs are higher as the length alkyl chain increases. The present study provides the surface and thermodynamic properties data of commercial fatty-alcohol ethoxylate surfactants (FAEs) at different temperatures (25–60 °C). These compounds are a mixture of fatty-alcohol ethoxylate oligomers with different degree of ethoxylation (2.6–11) and length of the alkyl chain (C10-C18). In this work, we analyzed determinate the water content by the Karl-Fisher method and measured the surface tension using the Wilhelmy plate method. In addition, we studied the effect of their structural parameters (degree of ethoxylation and length of alkyl chain) and the temperature on the changes of the thermodynamic functions (Gibbs free energy, enthalpy, and entropy) for the processes of adsorption and micellization. It was found an exponential decrease of the critical micellar concentration (CMC) in molar scale with the length alkyl chain of the fatty-alcohol ethoxylate surfactants, and the CMC values and thermodynamic parameters agree with those values found in literature for pure compounds. Moreover, the micellization entropy increases with the degree of ethoxylation of the surfactant.