Chemicals Used In Cleaning Cars
Whether you are an amateur detailing your own car or a professional twelve cars a day, you should get well au fait with the chemicals used in the industry, because all chemicals are dangerous if misused.
However, safety is just part of the reason for getting to know the chemicals used for cleaning cars, you also have to know if someone is trying to sell you liquids that will or just cannot do the job.
There are a great deal of charlatans in any line of business and a fool and his money are soon parted. Knowing the chemicals used for cleaning cars will help you avoid being cheated by suppliers.
For instance, you will often hear salesmen say that you can detail the inside of a car using the liquid from merely one bottle.
This is simply not true, especially if you have various fabrics inside the car like plastic door linings, fabric carpets and leather upholstery. It is just not feasible to clean all these different textiles well with just one liquid.
Surfactants are clever kinds of soap-like substances and consist of different ingredients, a bit like combined shampoo and conditioner for humans. These surfactant molecules consist of two kinds a hydrophile and a hydrophobe. The hydrophobe is drawn to dirt and it strives to break it down, whilst the hydrophile envelopes the dirt so that it can be taken away.
The most common solvent known to man is water, but it has just a limited effect on grease, so in the case of grease, manufacturers turn to butyl and dilemonene, which is extracted from lemon and orange peel. These solvents are expensive, but they are fairly harmless and can be used on several surfaces.
Other fats, such as sweat, can be washed away using animal fats that have been cured with a saponifier, which is normally a strong alkaline. This does not sound very agreeable, but we have all used soap made from animal fats.
The animal fat mixes with the human fat (say sweat) and they dissolve into one another. The alkaline then breaks them down so that they can be carried away. You do this each day when you wash or take a shower.
The science of cleaning is quite a complex one when you begin delving into it, but why some products are only effective for one sort of job only becomes apparent when you do study it.
However, once you do find out what is actually going on and where the chemicals have come from, a lot of individuals wish that they had not taken the time to go into the topic.
In summary, and to keep it easy (more for my sake than for yours, I assure you) try to treat like with like. Be wary of using a chemical for other than its specified job without having conducted trials on out-of-sight patches. Endeavour to use petroleum based cleaners on oil; alkaline cleaners on organic materials and acids on non-organic materials.
Owen Jones, the author of this piece, writes on lots of topics, but is now concerned with auto interior detailing. If you want some tips on detailing cars come over to our website now at Detailing Car Interiors.