JAN SEETZ
AkzoNobel Functional Chemicals
Stationsstraat 77, 3811 MH PO Box 247, 3800 AE Amersfoort, The Netherlands

Detergents clean surfaces and several cleaning parameters are used to give a good result. For soils that stick hard to a surface, often large quantities of a detergent are used in combination with high temperature over an extended timeframe and, if possible, mechanical energy is added to the process. All these factors, and especially the high temperature, make the cleaning process low eco-efficient.

An alternative for the high temperature and high amount of detergent is to use more powerful chemistry to lift the soil from the surface. Most dirt is connected to the surface with chemical bonds brought up by hard water ions.
Removing these hard water ions will efficiently detach the soil, which then can be taken into the washing solution by surfactants, as is depicted below.

Hard water ions can be removed by builders. There is a wide array of builders available, but only the strongest ones are capable of breaking the ‘Surface-Ca-Soil (S-Ca-S) bonds’.
Soda ash, Silicates, Zeolites and Citrates are too weak ...
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