
Anti-foaming agents are chemical additives, that eliminates or reduces unwanted foam development during industrial processes. The terms defoamer or Anti-foaming agents are often used interchangeably in this field. Foams are the substances formed by trapping air/gas pockets in a liquid or solid. It causes severe problems such as inefficiency in the process, defects in surface coatings, storage instability, and several other losses. Anti-foaming agents are having low viscosity and high surface active properties. It has tendency to spread rapidly on foam surfaces where it destabilizes foaming layers causing rupture of air bubbles and breaking of foam. Commonly used agents during removal of foams are insoluble oil, silicones, alcohols, stearates and glycol. Currently there are numerous applications of these agents in detergents, food industry, paper & pulp industry, water treatment plants, bio-chemicals industries, etc.