Chemicals Used For Cleaning Cars Whether you are an amateur detailing your own car or a professional detailing a dozen cars a day, you ought to get well au fait with the chemicals used in the industry, because all chemicals are perilous if misused. However, safety is merely 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 only 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 example, you will frequently hear people say that you can clean the inside of a car using the liquid from merely one bottle. This is simply not fact, particularly if you have various textiles inside the car like plastic door linings, fabric carpets and leather upholstery. It is merely not possible to detail all these different fabrics well with just one fluid. Surfactants are clever types of soap-like substances and consist of different ingredients, a little like combined shampoo and conditioner for humans. These surfactant molecules consist of two kinds a hydrophile and a hydrophobe. The hydrophobe is attracted to dirt and it attempts to break it down, whilst the hydrophile envelopes the dirt so that it can be taken away. The most widespread solvent known to man is water, but it has just a limited action 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 pretty harmless and can be used on several surfaces. Other fats, such as perspiration, can be washed away using animal fats that have been cured with a saponifier, which is usually a powerful alkaline. This does not sound very agreeable, but we have all used soap manufactured from animal fats. The animal fat mixes with the human fat (say perspiration) and they dissolve into one another. The alkaline then breaks them down so that they can get 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 start looking into it, but why some products are just good for one sort of job only becomes evident once you do study it. However, after you do find out what is really going on and where the chemicals have come from, a lot of people wish that they had not taken the time to go into the topic. In summary, and to keep it simple (more for my sake than for yours, I assure you) endeavour 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. Try to use
petroleum based cleaners on oil; alkaline cleaners on organic materials and acids on non-organic substances. Owen Jones, the writer of this article, writes on many topics, but is currently concerned with auto interior detailing. If you want some tips on detailing cars come over to our website now at Detailing Car Interiors.