First of all, let’s begin with a brief overview of cleaning chemistry... Cleaning surfactants are described as being anionic, cationic, or non-ionic. Anionics are generally foaming by nature, and are suited for products that foam. Non-ionics do not generally foam easily, so they’re often used for pre-sprays and extraction formulations. Cationics offer some benefit in anti-bacterial care but they’re the least useful in carpet cleaning. Anionics and cationics should not be mixed, because the cleaning performance will diminish and a residue build-up will likely result which will cause rapid resoiling.
Since non-ionics are low foamers, they’re ordinarily chosen for HWE pre-sprays and rinse products. And this is where the difference comes in with Encap-Punch. In fact this law of chemistry is the reason we initially had so much trouble developing a good crystallizing HWE product. When we approached development of an encapsulating HWE product we of course followed the standard view of chemistry. We formulated our initial products with low-foaming “non-ionic” surfactants. The problem is that the non-ionic surfactants gave us trouble with crystallizing (they dried like Smucker’s jelly). So we had to tone down and balance out the non-ionic surfactants in our earlier HWE products so they wouldn’t hamper the crystallization. We were able to strike a good balance. The problem is that I wasn't satisfied. I still felt we needed more cleaning punch. The initial products were not as strong on the detergent side as I had hoped for.
We went around and around trying to get more power out of our HWE detergent without blowing the crystal. And it appears that my persistence has finally paid off. Our chemist fortunately broke the rules and came across
a new surfactant that's anionic, yet it’s also low-foaming. Perfect! He mixed us up some samples using the new anionic surfactant, and we chose one that has excellent detergency and crystallization that is incredible. So we're now able to achieve strong cleaning power while maintaining awesome crystallization. And that is what gives Encap-Punch its PUNCH.
So to answer your question Mark, Encap-Punch is a low foaming anionic detergent. And as mentioned above, anionics are not compatible with cationics, so that is why the MSDS makes that statement.
Rick Gelinas
