May 10
15
The Science Behind the Environmentally Safe Cleaning Products
The Science
Colloidal chemistry is the new technology that makes possible the conversion of plant extracts such as soy, corn, wheat and grain. These are mixed with minute amounts of natural of non-iconic surfactants and pure water. The solutions emit no harmful fumes, are non-corrosive and have no flash point. New particles called colloidal micelles are created. Powerful micelles are created. Powerful micelle cleaning action causes long chain hydrocarbon soils such as fats, greases, oils, lipids, proteins and sugars to virtually repel from the cleaning surface so that soils can be rinsed away with water.
What is a Surfactant?
- A Surfactant (surface-active agent) is a compound that has two groups present in the molecule:
One being hydrophobic in nature which means water-hating or oil-like
- One being hydrophilic in nature which means water-liking.
When you have a surfactant with two groups present, you have a chemical compound that has surface-active properties or the ability to affect the interfacial relationship between two dissimilar substances such as oil and water.
The development of new surfactants has brought aqueous cleaners clean by subverting the soil. A non-emulsifying surfactant is designed to have higher affinity for the substrate than the soil does. The surfactant thus “lifts” the soil from the part of the surface without chemically reacting with it. For example, a non-emulsifying cleaner works well in spray applications. If a settling tank and oil skimmer are added to the system, soils can be removed and the cleaning solution can be re-used, sometimes indefinitely, without re-contaminating parts.
What is a Colloid?
A colloid, or colloidal dispersion, is a form of matter intermediate between a true solution (like salt dissolved in water) and mixture or suspension (Italian salad dressing right after you shake). Further research revealed that colloids have minute particles called micelles. When combined with water, micelles break water’s surface tension (the property that keeps water droplets round), resulting in “super wet” water. That some action allows the micelles to penetrate grease, oil and related organic soils and to hold them in liquid suspension. In effect, the micelle cleaning action is unique and can only be related to the effect of an atomic explosion where random interaction of the particles loosens the soil.
It has been demonstrated that substances such as petroleum compounds, waxes, the more complex alcohols, oil soluble dyes and other substances, which are insoluble in dilute detergent solutions will dissolve in solutions that contain these colloid particles micelles.
In laboratory tests the dyne/centimetre surface tension of tap water had been halved by the adding of as little as 1/3250th part of SC-1000™ This may serve to explain why the invention of SC-1000™ allows us to constitute so many solutions from one product that can have the properties of a soap, a detergent, a solvent or other cleaner, and yet be none of these in itself, and to do so with so nearly a perfect factor.
What is a Micelle?
The surfactants used by BIOBASED Europe Ltd consist of long molecules with two very different types of ends. One end likes water, and is called hydrophilic, the other end likes oil and dislikes water, and is called hydrophobic. When these surfactants are placed in water, the hydrophobic ends attract each other, and repel water, and arrange themselves into spherical structure with the hydrophobic ends on the outer surface of the sphere. This sphere is called a micelle.
“click here for further information on Micelle”
What about Cleaning?
Cleaning is mostly about cleaning different types of hydrophobic (or oily) soils. Why? Because hydrophollic, or water loving, soils are usually easily rinsed off with water. Micelles enable us to dissolve hydrophobic chemestries into water.
The tails of the surfactant like oil soils as well as they do each other, and begin to orient themselves on the surface of the oily soil as shown in the diagram below. Eventually that small part of the soli lifts off of the cleaning surface and becomes part of a micelle, thus cleaning the surface.
Two important features of SC-1000™ are its reusability and its poor emulsion formation. These two features actually have one single cause: the hydrophobic tails of SC-1000™ readily “let go” of oils, which when float to the surface of the water where they can be removed.
SAFE CARE® Safety Solvents
The SAFE CARE® Safety Solvents are non-polar plant-based solvents which provide the same or higher performance characteristics of traditional halogenated or chlorinated solvents with few or none of the disadvantages. SAFE CARE® Safety Solvents include solvents that are water miscible and non-miscible amd 100% evaporative and non-evaporative with Kauri Butinal (KB) values ranging from 150 to over 1000.