Persil the ""work of the washboard""—saving consumers time and rendering the historic method of "sun-bleaching" (by laying clothes out in the sun) unnecessary. Persil was the first commercially available self-activated laundry detergent (combining bleach with the detergent). The invention of Persil was a significant breakthrough. The name, "Persil", is derived from two of the original ingredients, sodium perborate and silicate. The original name was deemed unsuitable as an international brand because it is hard to pronounce in some languages. Coincidentally, "persil" is the French word for the herb, parsley. Persil is sold in powder, liquid detergent, liquid capsule, liqui-gel, and tablet
Laundry detergent cotton, wool, polyamide and polyacrylonitrile, sodium triphosphate removes soil more effectively than a surfactant alone. With hydrophobic fibres like polyesters and polyolefins, the effectiveness of the surfactant surpasses that of the builder. Surfactants are responsible for most of the cleaning performance in laundry detergent. They provide this by absorption and emulsification of soil into the water and also by reducing the water's surface tension to improve wetting. Laundry detergents contain mostly anionic and non-ionic surfactants. Cationic surfactants are normally incompatible with anionic detergents and have poor cleaning efficiency; they are employed only for certain special effects, as fabric softeners, antistatic