From raw material to cleaner: how we turn distribution chemistry into lab-tested formulas

The label on an industrial cleaner shows a product name, instructions for use and a row of hazard pictograms. What it does not show is the road the product has travelled: from a raw material that a distributor sources from a plant in Europe or Asia, through a recipe in our lab, to a formula that ends up in an IBC or a jerrycan at our factory in Oud-Gastel. For most buyers that road is invisible, and that is exactly why two cleaners with similar descriptions are so hard to tell apart. In this article we take you through the formulation side of the trade: what goes into a cleaner, how we choose between alternatives, how a formula is tested in the lab before it goes into production, and why “safer under CLP” is a design choice rather than a coincidence.

What a cleaner is made of

An industrial cleaner is not a single substance but a composition of five to ten components, each with a role. Once you know those roles, you understand why two products with the same pH can perform very differently.

Every component arrives as a raw material, usually in bulk and usually through a distributor. We source part of our raw materials and specialties through Nordmann BeNeLux in Capelle aan den IJssel. The reason a manufacturer works with a distributor instead of directly with dozens of producers is not only logistics. A good distributor supplies the technical documentation and the regulatory status with each raw material and, what makes the difference for us, application knowledge: which alternative exists when a substance comes under regulatory pressure, which surfactant behaves better in hard water, which chelating agent stays stable at a high pH. Those questions come up in the lab every day.

Formulating means choosing between alternatives

For almost every function in a cleaner there are several raw materials that can do the job. The formulator chooses, and those choices together determine the performance, the safety, the price and the environmental profile of the end product. A few examples of the trade-offs we make.

Alkalinity: potassium or sodium. Potassium hydroxide is more expensive than sodium hydroxide, but it dissolves better, crystallises out less readily at low temperatures and gives a cleaner that rinses better. For a product that sits in an unheated warehouse in winter, that is a reason to choose potassium.

Chelating agents: classic or biodegradable. EDTA and NTA bind hardness extremely well, but degrade poorly and are under pressure in a growing number of countries. GLDA and MGDA do comparable work, are biodegradable and fit well into a modern formula, at a slightly higher cost.

Surfactants: power or mildness. An anionic surfactant gives a lot of cleaning power and foam, but adds to the irritation classification. A combination with a non-ionic or amphoteric surfactant can reach the same cleaning power with a lower classification. This is the core of safer formulation, more on that below.

Solvents: petrochemical or plant-based. Ink, resin and bitumen need solvents. A glycol ether works fast but carries a hazard classification. A plant-based ester works more slowly but has no pictogram and a lower flash point. For a product used in a workshop without extraction, that slower action can be an acceptable price for the safety.

None of these choices is right or wrong by definition. They depend on the application, the substrate, the user and the way the product is dosed. That is why every formula at Cleanline starts with a description of the practice, not with a recipe.

Safer under CLP: a design choice

The CLP regulation determines which hazard pictograms and H-statements appear on a product. That classification follows from the composition: the concentration of each substance and its own classification together determine whether the end product is labelled as irritant, corrosive or hazardous to the environment. That makes the classification something you can steer. Change the composition and you change the label.

In practice that means a series of concrete steps we go through when designing a formula.

• Determine what cleaning power the application needs, measured on the real soil, not on a standard test.
• Choose the lowest alkalinity that still achieves that result, and the builder that does the most work at that alkalinity.
• Combine surfactants so that the total concentration stays below the irritation threshold, without compromising the emulsification of grease.
• Select chelating agents and solvents for biodegradability and for the absence of an environmental pictogram.
• Calculate the classification of the formula before a single litre is mixed, and only then go into the lab.

The result is a product that does the same job in the same application as a classic formula, but without pictograms or with fewer of them. For the user that means less personal protective equipment, simpler storage and less paperwork. How that plays out in a workshop is described in our article on safe degreasing in the workshop without CLP hazard pictograms (in Dutch).

What belongs with this is honesty about the limits. A heavily alkaline degreaser for baked-on grease in a production line, or an acid for thick boiler scale, gets a pictogram, and rightly so. Safer formulation is not about polishing away hazards, but about not building in hazards the application does not need.

From recipe to lab to production

A formula on paper is a hypothesis. The lab decides whether it holds. At Cleanline every new or modified formula goes through a fixed series of steps before it is released to production.

Only when all steps have been completed does a formula go to the first production batch. Control continues there: every batch is measured for pH, density and appearance and compared with the reference from the lab. That is how a customer knows that the cleaner from the hundredth batch does the same as the sample on which they once decided.

Incoming raw materials get the same attention. A surfactant from a different producer can be composed slightly differently under the same trade name. That is why a new raw material or a new supplier is checked in the lab before it goes into production, and it helps when the distributor flags that change in advance and supplies the accompanying documentation. How raw materials and finished product are stored safely, from chemical cabinet to IBC storage, is described in our article on safe storage of chemicals and raw materials in the production warehouse (in Dutch).

What this means for anyone buying a cleaner

For a buyer the formulation side is usually invisible, but there are questions you can put to any supplier that make the difference between a traded product and a formulated product visible.

• Has the cleaner been tested on the soil and the substrate we use it for, and can we see the test result?
• Which choices in the formula were made to keep the classification low, and where is the limit?
• What happens when a raw material changes or disappears: is that reported, and is the replacement tested again?
• Can the formula be adapted to our situation, for example to hard water, a lower temperature or a specific substrate?
• Can we get the same product under our own label, with the same formula and the same documentation?

That last question comes up more and more. Companies that resell cleaning products or place them with their customers under their own name want a formula that is tuned for them, with a label and a safety data sheet in their name. How that works in practice, from first sample to own label, is described in our article on having private label cleaning products produced (in Dutch). Your brand, our lab.

Measurable difference

What deliberate formulation delivers can be summed up in three figures we regularly see when reformulating. A workshop degreaser that has moved from a classic to a safer formula keeps the same cleaning time on oil and grease at the same dilution, while the label goes from two pictograms to none. An alkaline cleaner in which EDTA has been replaced by a biodegradable chelating agent loses nothing in hard water and loses the environmental pictogram. And a cleaner that has been tuned in the lab to the customer’s actual soil is almost always used at a lower dose in practice than the standard product it replaces, because it does exactly what is needed and nothing more.

That is the work behind the label: choosing raw materials with expertise, designing a formula for the application, testing it against practice, and repeating that with every batch. Our own laboratory and R&D team, and distributors who think along about the raw materials, make that possible.

Conclusion

An industrial cleaner is the outcome of a series of choices: which raw materials, in which proportions, with which classification as a result. Those choices are made in the lab, based on the user’s practice, and they determine whether a product is safe, effective and consistent over a hundred batches. Anyone buying a cleaner is entitled to ask about those choices. Anyone making a cleaner should be able to explain them.

Do you have a soil or a substrate the standard range does not cover, or would you like to know how an existing formula can be made safer? Send us a description and, where possible, a sample of the soil, and we will formulate a proposal in the lab and send a trial sample to test in practice.

Conclusie

Een industriële reiniger is de uitkomst van een reeks keuzes: welke grondstoffen, in welke verhouding, met welke classificatie als gevolg. Die keuzes worden gemaakt in het lab, op basis van de praktijk van de gebruiker, en ze bepalen of een product veilig, effectief en betrouwbaar is over honderd batches. Wie een reiniger inkoopt, mag naar die keuzes vragen. Wie een reiniger maakt, moet ze kunnen uitleggen.

Heb je een vervuiling of een ondergrond waar het standaardassortiment niet op past, of wil je weten hoe een bestaande formule veiliger kan? Stuur ons een omschrijving en zo mogelijk een monster van de vervuiling, dan formuleren we in het lab een voorstel en sturen we een proefmonster om het in de praktijk te testen.