Chelating agent for cleaning Development Department of Company Q (Commercial Hygiene Product Manufacturer)
What is the key to achieving both environmental friendliness and the power to remove stubborn calcium-based dairy stains?
Company Q is a manufacturer and seller of commercial dishwasher detergents for restaurants, hotels, and other such establishments. In line with movements in the industry to promote safer and more environmentally-friendly products, it too has been working to replace the base ingredients in its detergents with more environmentally-friendly alternatives as part of its product development efforts.
However, once development began, the team from the New Product Development Department was faced with the major challenge of finding alternative ingredients that could match the performance level of the existing ones.
As the Department Lead K (hereafter, "K") described the situation at the time.
“Our search for alternative ingredients was prompted by a change to the PRTR system in April 2023, under which EDTA (ethylenediaminetetraacetic acid) and NTA (nitrilotriacetic acid) would become reportable substances, and we were exploring alternatives to these substances.”
As chelating agents, EDTA and NTA had the important role of enhancing the action of surfactants and maintaining strong cleaning performance. However, since these substances became reportable under the PRTR system, when they are used, the amount of discharge and transfer must be tracked and reported to the government. As a result, there has been a growing movement among detergent users to shift toward PRTR-exempt products out of consideration for the environment, and so Company Q decided to align with this trend.
In addition, for this development project, the company aimed to enhance cleaning performance as a way to differentiate itself from competitors. The existing detergents had, in fact, frequently received negative feedback from café chains that use a lot of dairy products like milk, butter, and cream—saying that residues were often left behind after washing.
“We initially tried formulating a prototype detergent using sodium polyacrylate as a chelating agent to replace EDTA and NTA. However, its calcium chelation performance—particularly important for dairy residues—was insufficient, and so was its cleaning ability,” says K.
Next, the team evaluated other polycarboxylic acid-based polymers, but they discovered that some of these polymers exhibited a deterioration in dispersibility depending on the hardness of the water used for washing.
Several months into the project, the product development team, including K, still had not found an alternative base ingredient that was exempt from PRTR reporting requirements, offered strong calcium chelating ability, and improved cleaning performance.
A sense of urgency was beginning to grow among the team members from the Product Development Department.
The goal: to find a chelating agent—as an alternative to EDTA and NTA, which now fall under the scope of the PRTR system
Better cleaning power in terms of stains caused by the large volumes of calcium present in dairy products also desired
Sodium polyacrylate and other polycarboxylic acid-based polymers tried, but do not offer sufficient cleaning power
"AQUALIC™ FN-001," a proprietary product developed by Nippon Shokubai, is a polymer-type chelating agent that is not subject to the PRTR system.
FN-001 offers high calcium chelating performance to the same standard as EDTA
Low deterioration in dispersibility performance even in very hard water
Powerful stain re-adhesion prevention performance leaves a great finish
AQUALIC FN-001 was on display at the Nippon Shokubai booth at an exhibition when it caught the attention of K, who was gathering information and wanted to know more.
AQUALIC FN-001 is a high-performance polymer chelating agent developed independently by Nippon Shokubai and does not fall within the scope of the PRTR system. It was explained to K that it offers high calcium chelating performance to the same standard as EDTA, in addition to high dispersibility and stain re-adhesion prevention performance.
Deeply intrigued by FN-001, they immediately obtained a sample from Nippon Shokubai and began to evaluate it.
K recalled “The detergent sample containing FN-001 demonstrated powerful cleaning performance. Furthermore, even at only around a tenth of the amount of NTA, it still demonstrated a strong effect. I was really surprised by this.”
On top of this, even when used with very hard water, it exhibits no deterioration in dispersibility such as that seen in other polymer chelating agents. It also boasts powerful stain re-adhesion prevention performance while leaving a great finish after washing.
“The result of our evaluation was that FN-001 would be the most effective candidate chelating agent for our new product. We then decided to have customers try out the prototype detergent containing FN-001.
As a result of this, we got many favorable comments stating that the cleaning power of the product had increased, and that there was less glassware with residue left on it.” (K said)
The Development Department grew in confidence after this feedback from customers and is currently looking into scaling up their new product with the aim of commercializing a new cleaning agent containing AQUALIC FN-001.
