Since the fabric softener was introduced to the consumer market in the early 1960 s, its market size has been steadily growing.
In 1984, production reached 200 thousand tons. The fabric softening procedure is becoming one of the important parts of the home laundry routine work now. There are three types of softener used in the home laundry to impart softness and static control to fabrics : rinse cycle use, wash cycle use and dryer cycle use. Among them, rinse cycle softeners are still the most popular and dimethyl distearyl ammoniunm chloride (DSDMAC) is generally used as a softener base. A typical domestic fabric softener consists of approximately 5% aqueous dispersion of DSDMAC. In this paper, structure of the dispersion and adsorption behavior of DSDMAC onto fabrics is described.