How Cleaning Works: The Chemistry of Cleaning

To many cleaning company staff and maids, cleaning a home is a routine that they know and is taught by their cleaning supervisor, or manager. Cleaning will entail a list of tasks like making beds, taking out the trash, wiping areas, and vacuuming. Each cleaning company will have different strategies and routines. It's recommended that each cleaning company, as well as each homeowner that likes to tackle their own housekeeping tasks, fully understands how cleaning works, and the science of cleaning. How certain cleaning chemicals work to remove dirt, grime, and other contaminants. The key steps to follow when cleaning are:

• Locate the dirt/contaminants: This simply means you need to find where the dirt and soiled areas are in the home so that you can begin successfully cleaning them.
• Identify the dirt: In this step, you need to figure out what the dirt is made of (blood, oils, food, calcium, etc.) so that you can determine the correct chemicals to use and the correct strategy to remove the dirt.
• Contain it: Ensure the problem isn't getting worse or spreading, creating damage, or making it harder to remove.
• Removing the dirt (aka actually cleaning it): At this step, you will need to use the correct chemicals and strategy to remove the dirt and dispose of it correctly.

Cleaning Is Done on a Molecular Level

To fully understand cleaning products — whether the ones you can buy at the store at retail, or special, commercially available chemicals — you need to have a solid understanding of the science of cleaning.

The Chemistry of Cleaning Agents

In order to effectively clean something, you need to apply a cleaning agent and create a chemical solution. This is a fundamental part of how cleaning works. Most cleaning agents and solutions are made with water and soap/detergent, or an organic solvent. The key thing to remember is that similar items will dissolve into similar items. Like when you play chemist and try to mix water and oil, you will notice they won't mix. They are not alike.

Now let's look at the actual cleaning science on a molecular level. Taking into account that water and oil don't mix, and the majority of what we call dirt is actually some sort of oily base one way or another, you can combat the dirt with a water and soap combination. Soap will mix with water and with the oil. This is because the soap will have two different ends on a molecular level. These two ends are hydrophilic and hydrophobic. One end will bind with the water, and the other end, with the grease/dirt, creating an effective chemical reaction that allows you to remove the dirt. The soap molecule has two different ends: one that is hydrophilic (polar head) that binds with water and the other that is hydrophobic (non-polar hydrocarbon tail) that binds with grease and oil.

With a better understanding of how cleaning chemicals work, you must also remember that agitation is very helpful in removing dirt from surfaces. Agitation will help the charged particles separate, and then they will rearrange themselves based on their charges, further removing the dirt for you. Agitation allows the chemicals to do their job more effectively.

Just as important as water is when cleaning, there also must be sufficient air during the cleaning process, so that the cleaned surface can properly dry, and not create further grounds for breeding contaminants and pollutants. How does drying happen? It will happen only when suspended moist air is replaced by the warm dry air around it. Once an area is fully dried, the risk of mold and bacteria spread is limited and inhibited by the clean, dry surface.

Key Cleaning Terminology

To help further your understanding of the science of cleaning, let's familiarise ourselves with some technical cleaning terminology. Soaps and detergents will have certain molecular properties:

Hydrophobic – Water Fearing

Hydrophobic is defined as “the fear of water”. Its molecules will repel water all the time. Hydrophobic liquids (like oils), will separate from the water and not mix. The molecules are non-polar, meaning the small atoms that make up the molecule do not produce a static electric field.

Hydrophilic – Water Loving

A hydrophilic molecule is the opposite of hydrophobic. The molecule will interact with water and other polar substances in a more favourable way than their exchanges with oils or other hydrophobic solvents.

Lipophobic – Oil Fearing

A chemical property that means “fat rejection”. Lipophobic compounds are not very soluble in oil and fats, or other non-polar solvents.

Lipophilic – Oil Loving

Lipophilic refers to the ability of a chemical compound to dissolve in fats and oils.

7 Cleaning Mechanisms and How They Get Things Cleaner

Diving deeper into how something gets clean, it's important to understand the mechanisms of cleaning. Things get clean through 7 mechanisms. Each one tackles the dirt/soiled area in a different way, and they are important to understand so you can use them in the correct applications.

1. Solvency: This refers to a detergent that dissolves into another agent, like water. Think of your general cleaning chemical. It takes the detergent and spreads it across the water so that the molecules can begin to work on a molecular level against the grime and dirt.
2. Emulsification: An emulsifier generally works to break down fats and oils — ones that generally wouldn't mix with a cleaning agent — into small enough particles that they can then get suspended in the cleaning agent, and effectively rinsed away, leaving you with a clean surface.
3. Saponification: The creation of soap, which is a staple in the cleaning industry. Triglycerides are treated with a strong base like lye, releasing fatty acid salts and glycerine.
4. Chelation: If you live in a hard water part of the world, like Calgary, you will need cleaning products with chelation agents in them. Hard water is caused when water travels through rock like limestone and picks up deposits of calcium and magnesium. This makes the water hard, and harder to clean with. A chelation agent will overcome this when you clean your home. The calcium or magnesium will react with the detergent, and create fewer bubbles and foaming when cleaning, making it harder to clean. A chelation agent will prevent the magnesium or calcium from interfering with the detergent and its cleaning properties.
5. Suspension: A cleaning agent with suspension properties is great at taking the grime and dirt, and suspending it in the cleaner. This then allows the house cleaner to wipe away the dirty particles, and clean the area.
6. Wetting: If you decrease the surface tension of a cleaning solution, it will increase its wetting capabilities. Increasing the wetting ability of a cleaning agent will allow a cleaner to break through small spaces and get under the soil to help lift it from the dirt. This is a great way of increasing the cleaning agent's effectiveness.
7. Disinfection: A disinfectant doesn't lift away grime, or suspend the dirt like other cleaning chemicals will. It cleans on a more microscopic level. A disinfectant will kill pathogenic bacteria, leaving an entirely clean surface. The pathogens you generally won't see with your naked eye, so it's easy to skip this step. However, for a truly clean and proper job, disinfection should not be skipped.

Understanding T.A.C.T When Cleaning a Home

Now that you have learned the chemistry of cleaning, from the molecular level of how it works to the more broad mechanisms of each cleaning agent, we now need to understand the cleaning equation. When you go to hire house cleaners in Calgary, you need to ensure they have a full understanding of these 4 points. You have 4 cleaning tools when fighting a soiled surface. The four pillars are Time, Action, Chemical, and Temperature — a great acronym to remember them by is TACT.

Three Types of Cleaning Products: Acid, Alkaline, Solvent

To fully understand cleaning products, you must understand pH levels. pH is the measure of how acidic or basic a solution is — from cleaning chemicals to drinks. pH ranges from 0 to 14. A pH of 0–6 is considered acidic. From pH 8 to 14, you have a base. pH 7 is neutral, and a good example of a neutral liquid is plain water.