All About Rinse Aids

Q: What are rinse aids?  Are rinse aids found in Solujet?

A: There are basically three kinds of rinse aids:

  1. Hydrophobic rinse aids that deposit on a substrate that repel the water off the surface, but leave themselves behind as a residue.
  2. Surfactants that wet surfaces and allow rinse water to sheet off a surface without leaving behind droplets that will cling and evaporate, potentially leaving water spots.
  3. Acid rinses that dissolve insoluble alkaline salt residues (typically calcium, magnesium and iron salts) that can be formed during the first alkaline cleaning cycle in a washer.

Alconox, Inc. does not make any detergents with hydrophobic rinse aids, because we adhere 100% to residue-free cleaning.  This dedication to free-rinsing detergents always us to be so ubiquitously utilized in such industries as medical device manufacturing and reprocessing, biopharmaceutical manufacturing, food processing and service, and analytical laboratories. Hyrdophobic rinse aids is what you get with household and consumer rinse aids available at the grocery or hardware store.  Think water beads on a “cleaned” car.

Solujet® Low-Foaming Phosphate-Free Liquid contains the second type of rinse aid denoted, surfactants, that act as a wetting and sheeting rinse aid.  This allows this detergent in particular to be such an effective Clean-In-Place (CIP) detergent for pharma and biotech residues.

Alconox, Inc. does make an acid rinse aid, the third type listed.  This is our Citrajet® Low-Foam Liquid Acid Cleaner/Rinse which also contains wetting and sheeting rinse aids. If you are washing with tap water, especially water with high hardness, or if you have any heavy metals present on the substrates you are cleaning, you can greatly reduce water spots and hardness residues by using Citrajet detergent.  This cleaner is often used as the acid rinse cycle in CIP or lab washers.



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