Modification and Testing the Performance of Floor Surface Cleaning Gel
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Date
2012
Authors
Azza Abu-Asab
Doa Al-Shiekh
Ola Abd-Elhadi
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Abstract
The project is based on a previous project The Preparation of Palestinian Standard for Floor Cleaning Gel taking the recommendations and findings on the ratio of pine oil/LABS as a start concentrations for the project. According to the rapid increase in the cost of the pine oil, there is a necessity to produce the floor cleaning gel with a lower cost and with same or better efficiency, and finding a suitable replacement of pine oil if any exist. This need is based on the actual market volume of floor cleaning gel which is approximately 6700 tons per year; so it is worth to study how one can lower cleaning gel main ingredients cost. To achieve this, a systematic experimental approach was carried out where cleaning gel samples were produced in the laboratory at different LABS to pine oil ratio. To modify the floor cleaning gel, abrasive materials were added. A pine oil free cream hard surface cleaner was prepared but proved to be separable. In order to evaluate the cleaning efficiency and performance of the gel for contaminated soil tile a straight line apparatus was used and the surface tension of cleaning gel solution was measured. The surface activity concept was used to test the performance of the gel at different cleaning cycle times. All modifications carried out on all samples were based on information taken from open literatures and the Palestinian Standard Institute (PSI) for any regulations and information of a standard floor cleaning gel. Results out of this project show that the concentration of the pine oil can be reduced to a half of what was found in the previous project (5wt% to 2.5 wt %). This was supported by measuring the critical micelle concentration cmc of the gel which was found to be 310 ppm. A comparison of the cleaning efficiency of the prepared sample with a commercial product was carried out under variable cleaning cycle times. It was found that if number of cycle time increases, more reduction of surface tension were found.