•  On Mar, 22, 2018
•  admin
•   Detergent, Surface Cleaning

Detergent

Most of the industry users putting less attention in bacteria in detergent.  However there are some industries emphasize about bacteria control, such as 1) Food industry;  2) Medicine industry; 3) Metal Cutting industry.

Through our life span testing, our detergent could maintain the product characteristic even up to 2 years storage.  However this doesn’t mean that our detergent is free from bacteria but the impact is very minimum.

Let us put some effort explain some points about bacteria in detergent.

Bacteria Living Environment

In order to favour bacteria grow, we have to ensure the bacteria iving environment.  There are a few key factors:

1. Solution pH.  Most of the bacteria growth within the pH 5.5 to 9.  Any solution either acidic or alkaline base, it normally will not favour the growth of bacteria.  In acidic environment, mold may persist but not bacteria.
2. Temeprature.  Room temperature with high moisture definitely is favour for bacteria.
3. Solution concentration.  High solution concentration is having low tendancy in bacteria growth.  The water in bacteria cell will dryoff due to osmosis effect.
4. Oxygen.  There are aerobic and anaerobnic bacteria, you may see difference bacteria type in this case.

Level of Bacteria Count

We do not want to comment much in bacteria count difference in 2 type of sulution.  This could be due to difference solution nature.  In some cases, user may experience difference bacteria count in 2 difference solution.  This could be:

1. Difference in formulation in the solution.
2. Difference in Solution pH.

Did Bacteria Spoil my Detergent

After the study, basically user want to understand if the bacteria change the solution characteristic.  Besides the detail check in detergent solution content, user could always approach a simple examination to see if there is any change in solution characteristic.
Afer the growth of bacteria, and bacteria count get build up, the bacteria actually is consuming the detergent.  After a stage of accumulation, whereby the solution pH will change to more acidic then it originally.  Under this circumstances, the solution character may change.

Apart from the change in pH, user may also notice distinct change in smell.  This also a sign of characteristic change.

Without smell or pH change, we would assume the detergent still within the working range as it should be.

Reduce the Bacteria Count in the Detergent Solution

User may want to change the detergent formulation so that it would less favour for bacteria growth.  However if user really particular on bacteria count, they can always install UV light in the pipe line to reduce the bacteria in detergent.

Since the UV light is installed within the pipe line, the detergent solution only expose under the UV light within fraction of second, hence the UV light shall not affact the detergent quality.

In case our user is very particular about bacteria growth in their production, in most cases we do not recommend user to install UV light in the pipe line.

How should I Sterilize Pipe Line

After sometime of usage, we want to sterilize our pipe line so that we could remove some unwanted contamination include the bacteria.  There are several chemical which user consider for pipe line cleaning.

1. Hydrogen Peroxide (H2O2).
2. Sodium Hypo-Chloride.
3. Nitric Acid.

Select the appropriate sterilize solution which match with your pipe line material.  For instance user could consider Nitric Acid solution if the pipe line is stainless steel.  Pump in the solution and get it retains in the pipe line or keep on flushing several times within the system.

There is not rare case if our user encounter bacteria in diluted detergent solution.  Before we are having any corrective action, we have to consider whether the bacteria is bringing adverse effect to the production result.