56
J. Cosmet. Sci., 76.1, 56–70 (January/February 2025)
*Address all correspondence to Shawn Eady, shawn@sironix.eco
Oleo-Furan Sulfonates: Bio-Renewable and Versatile
Surfactants Platform for Formulation of Mild Personal Care
Products
SHAWN EADY, MANSI GOKANI, SABRINA CONRAD, TYLER ROBISON,
MICHELLE CRUZ AND CHRISTOPH KRUMM
Sironix Renewables, Seattle, Washington, United States (S.E., M.G., S.C., T.R., M.C., C.K.)
Accepted for publication January 28, 2025.
Synopsis
The transition to bio-based surfactants with lower carbon footprints in consumer products has allowed
product formulators to adapt in a rapidly changing regulatory environment and to meet the growing
customer demand for safe, sustainable ingredients. This study explores oleo-furan sulfonates, a new class of
anionic surfactants sourced from cellulosic agricultural waste and renewable plant oils, as fully bio-renewable
alternatives to ether sulfate surfactants for use in consumer products. This structurally versatile surfactants
platform reduces life cycle carbon emissions by nearly 50% compared to incumbent anionic surfactants
while avoiding regulated, carcinogenic byproducts present in many cleaning and personal care products.
The properties of oleo-furan sulfonates, including foam generation, fabric wetting kinetics, critical micelle
concentration, dermal irritation, and hard water tolerance, are compared to the state-of-the-art in commercial
anionic surfactants. Formulation development with oleo-furan sulfonates demonstrated compatibility across
a broad range of personal care product ingredients to yield body wash gels shelf stable for over six months.
Solid format formulations prepared with 100% active oleo-furan sulfonate powders readily hydrate to form
a mild body wash exhibiting a creamy gel texture and rich lather with viscosities in the range of 14,000 and
20,000 cps.
INTRODUCTION
The substitution of plant-based surfactants for petrochemical and non-renewably sourced
surfactants in consumer products has been an ongoing effort spanning several decades.1–3
This transition has in part been motivated by increased consumer demand for eco-friendly
products as well as the drive to reduce carbon emissions and pollution in manufacturing,
both major contributing factors toward climate change.4,5 Considering the essential role that
surfactants serve in the formulation of a wide range of consumer and industrial products, this
shift has been a massive undertaking, and has generated impressive results to date. Thanks
to these efforts, bio-based surfactants can now be derived from a myriad of renewable
sources, including lipids, carbohydrates, and lignin, among others.6–9 Additionally, these

57 Oleo-Furan Sulfonates
efforts have led to innovations in manufacturing methods to provide economically viable
biosurfactant ingredients in high yields, such as the use of biorefineries for production of
carbohydrate-based surfactants.10,11 These advances in bio-based surfactant technology are
reflected in their increasing market share, which was valued at nearly $19 billion (USD) in
2022, comprising ∼40% of the total surfactants market, and is projected to grow to $26
billion by 2032, with an anticipated CAGR of 3.9%.12
Despite the impressive progress of technologies for biosurfactant design and manufacturing,
a significant proportion of surfactants used in consumer products are still fossil-based, with
nearly half of these surfactants being derived from polyethoxylated units.13 In particular,
products formulated with anionic surfactants, which are particularly effective for soil
removal and foam generation consumers value in shampoos, body wash, facial cleansers,
and hand soap, commonly feature petrochemical-based polyethoxylated units, such as in
sodium lauryl ether sulfate (SLES). The transition away from such fossil-sourced ingredients
has largely been hindered by their low cost, superior performance, and compatibility in a
wide variety of formulated products. For example, one of the leading fully bio-renewable
anionic surfactants, sodium lauryl sulfate (SLS), is often avoided by product formulators due
to stability issues related to use in hard water (rich in minerals like calcium and magnesium)
and cold water, both of which can result in deactivation for SLS in some products. In
comparison, polyethoxylated surfactants such as SLES maintain high performance in both
hard and cold water environments, while simultaneously offering lower dermal and ocular
irritation levels compared to SLS. The use of natural oil feedstocks and renewably sourced
ethylene oxide (e.g., from sugarcane) in SLES manufacturing has allowed for a lower carbon
footprint however, this accounts for a small percentage of global SLES production.
Use of the EPA-regulated petrochemical feedstock ethylene oxide in SLES manufacturing
and the presence of 1.4-dioxane, a carcinogenic byproduct, have provided challenges for
what is currently the highest-volume anionic surfactant in household cleaning and personal
care products. Regulations establishing dioxane content limits as low as 1 ppm in household
cleaning and personal care products have already been passed in New York, with signs of
further policy adoption still to come at the State and Federal level.14 As a result, more than
1,400 products exceeding this dioxane content may be banned in 2025 unless they are
reformulated.15 In recent years, dioxane contamination limits have increasingly become
a challenge for chemical manufacturers producing SLES, requiring costly surfactant
treatments such as steam stripping or nitrogen purging to reduce dioxane content.16 These
treatments increase production costs while still failing to remove dioxane contamination
entirely. With the challenge of bio-renewable ingredient restriction disproportionately
impacting the anionic surfactants market, the leading global surfactants market, by
market size and distribution volume, new surfactant ingredients are still urgently needed.17
Sironix’s design for oleo-furan sulfonate (OFS) surfactants is intended to meet this need
(Figure 1) while maintaining the high performance standards that encourage product
formulators to widely use SLES in personal care formulations.
DESIGN AND STRUCTURAL VERSATILITY OF OFS SURFACTANTS PLATFORM
OFS surfactants are 100% plant-based platform molecules that have demonstrated superior
performance and comparable costs to leading anionic surfactants while avoiding the use of
ethylene oxide and dioxane contamination. As seen in Figure 2, OFS surfactants are prepared
from cellulose-derived furans combined with plant-oil-derived fatty acids using proprietary