🧼 Explaining Phosphate Esters: Speciality surfactants manufactured by Lakeland in Manchester

29 Sep 2023

Phosphate esters are highly versatile, with excellent environmental profiles and consistent product performance across a huge range of industries. Lakeland's team explains more about phosphate esters, how they're used and how Lakeland's speciality phosphate ester manufacturing in Manchester benefits our clients.

🧼 Explaining Phosphate Esters: Speciality surfactants manufactured by Lakeland's speciality chemicals team in Manchester

Phosphate esters, manufactured in Manchester by Lakeland Laboratories' speciality surfactants team, are incredibly versatile, supporting a wide range of uses across many industry sectors from industrial and institutional cleaning to manufacturing and agriculture.

Adapted and developed to suit bespoke purposes, phosphate esters from Lakeland in Manchester perform consistently well to deliver a reliable surfactant relied upon by clients and their products' end users.

But what are phosphate esters and how are they used?

What are phosphate esters?

Derivative of phosphoric acid, phosphate esters, as well as diesters and polyol esters, are ester-based fluid chemicals used most often for:

• Hydraulic fluids
• Electro-hydraulic operations
• Lubricants
• Lubricant additives
• Electrolyte systems

Surfactant chemical phosphate esters are organophosphorous compounds, the product of the reaction of organic or inorganic acid with an alcohol, or another organic compound containing hydroxyl radical.

Organic salts of orthophosphoric acid, chemicals manufacturers of speciality surfactants like Lakeland Laboratories utilise the chemical in our synthetic fluids to offer safe phosphate ester products.

How safe are phosphate esters?

Phosphate esters are stable surfactants with good, reliable performance. These multi-purpose speciality chemicals have high flash and fire points, low combustion heats and are fire resistant, making them ideal for use in a range of demanding environments.

Excellent understanding of phosphate esters, continued development of their stability, anti-wear and fire resistant properties mean that phosphate esters are heavily relied upon in industrial settings.

What benefits do phosphate esters offer?

High viscosity phosphate esters have been developed for decades to offer benefits including:

• Excellent oxidation and thermal stability
• Biodegradable, with good environmental profiles
• Low toxicity
• Good performance at low temperature
• Highly viscous
• Depending on the formulation, phosphate esters can offer good additive solubility
• Fire resistant and self-extinguishing properties, which cannot sustain a flame
• Emulsifying, low foaming wetting agent

How are phosphate esters used in industry?

Principally, phosphate esters are surfactants used in lubrication and anti-wear applications, protecting moving equipment, parts and components, as well as operating personnel, during use. Fire resistant properties also protect the integrity of machinery where high-pressure and high-temperature functions are operating in close proximity.

Agricultural businesses use phosphate esters as a dispersing agent when treating and protecting crops, while manufacturers of industrial and institutional cleaning products, as well as IIC end users, benefit from excellent emulsifying properties.

In particular, Lakeland's customers and other industries use phosphate esters:

• In electro-hydraulic control systems
• In turbines and compressors
• As additives in lubricants such as anti-wear formulations, stabilisers, and metal passivators, with powerful reduction in surface tension achieved
• As extreme-pressure additives
• In aviation hydraulics
• Widely in industrial and institutional cleaning applications, owing to excellent emulsifying properties and detergency
• In metal finishing as a lubricant
• As antistatics and to prevent corrosion

Phosphate ester manufacture in Manchester by Lakeland Laboratories

Lakeland Laboratories' phosphate esters are manufactured in Manchester by our own team, and are available from our standard range or custom-developed to suit specific purposes.

Manufactured using quality raw materials sourced to strict standards, and with exceptional compliance and technical support, Manchester’s Lakeland Laboratories distributes highly effective phosphate esters manufactured in Manchester to industries worldwide through our distribution network.

Backed by over 60 years of chemical expertise and our in-house product research and development laboratory, Lakeland Laboratories has established an unmatched reputation for independent, speciality manufacture of phosphate esters in Manchester, ensuring the quality of our products and their performance remains reliably consistent.

A commitment to research, and with chemistry at the heart of what we do, Lakeland's team is driven to continue to develop our product range for ever-better phosphate ester surfactant performance.

Find out more about phosphate ester manufacture in Manchester from Lakeland Laboratories

With chemistry at the heart of our business, Lakeland’s surfactant manufacturing team in Manchester is dedicated to continual improvement and delivering reliable, consistent and high-performance amphoteric, phosphate ester, wax emulsion and speciality surfactants which support industry, food production, cleaning and manufacturing processes worldwide.

Contact us to request a sample!