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In this month’s column, Matt Baines, Premiere Cleaning Academy Manager at Premiere Products, discusses one of the key tools that has helped him in shape his understanding of cleaning chemicals – the pH scale.


Before launching into my chosen subject matter for this month I would like to take the small liberty of wishing all of the Tomorrow’s Cleaning readership a very Happy New Year. I truly hope you’ve had an enjoyable festive season and are now set fair to face the year ahead.


Whilst pondering the subject matter of this month’s article and knowing that one of the features of this January 2016 edition would focus on cleaning chemicals, it got me to thinking – what have been some of the key tools I have relied upon over the years whilst providing training and technical advice on this very subject matter?


In fairness there have been a great many ‘devices’ that have been useful in bolstering my knowledge and assisting me in answering even the thorniest of enquiries. These range from chemical concentrate cost- in-use calculators to carpet and upholstery stain removal guides to manufacturer by manufacturer product comparison charts. However I strongly believe that I would be absolutely lost without a rudimentary understanding of the pH scale.


The reason the pH scale is, in my opinion, such a handy tool is that it allows us a basic, at a glance understanding of what a chemical is designed to do, what its cleaning capabilities are and relatively speaking, how ‘strong’ it is in comparison to another similar product.


As many of you will no doubt know, the pH scale ranges from zero to 14 and if anything in this life were ever easy I suppose we would be able to say that zero is very weak and 14 is very strong. Obviously this is not the case! In point of fact the mildest point on the


30 | Tomorrow’s Cleaning January 2016


scale is pH 7 or pH neutral and whilst it would be unfair to label the cleaning products that exist at or around this value to be weak, it is accurate to say that they are mild. It is therefore in this region that we will find those cleaning products that are not necessarily the most potent but are certainly ‘surface friendly’ – highly unlikely to cause any damage, even if used to clean the most sensitive of substrates.


I strongly believe that I would be absolutely lost without a rudimentary


understanding of the pH scale.


Now in my experience, were you talking to a chemist they would insist that pH 7 and only pH 7 is neutral and that any movement up or down from that point takes you into either acid or alkaline territory. From a cleaning perspective however, it’s my opinion that we can afford to be a little more relaxed than that and I would generally accept that any cleaning chemical with a pH of between six and eight could loosely be considered neutral.


As we incrementally move up the scale from seven towards 14, cleaning chemical strength increases in terms of alkalinity. Alkalis naturally make effective degreasers so we know that anything inhabiting this end of the pH scale is likely to possess this capability. Similarly as we move down


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