O-Acylated Hydroxy carboxylic acid anhydrides: Novel Building Blocks for Surfactants and Emulsifiers

We recently discovered that hydroxy carboxylic acids like malic, tartaric and citric acid can be converted in one step and quantitatively into the title compounds by reacting them with fatty acid chlorides. The title compounds are excellent electrophiles for ring opening reactions with a broad variety of nucleophiles – also frequently from renewable resources - such as alcohols, carbohydrates, amines, amino acids and amino sugars. This way a wide variety of novel surface active compounds are obtained, many of which turned out to be interesting (useful) surfactants and/or emulsifiers for applications in cosmetics, as food additives and for a variety of industrial processes. In the lecture we describe a) the preparation of these materials, b) their surface active properties c) antimicrobial activities.