Front-Load Detergent Powder

Details

A genuinely low-foam powder for a front loader, declared at 19 percent active matter by cation titration to the method in Annex B of IS 4955. Low foam is not a refinement in a front loader, it is the whole requirement, and it is worth being exact about why. A front loader has no agitator. It cleans by lifting clothes on the drum ribs and dropping them into the wash liquor, and the impact of that drop is most of the mechanical work. Foam cushions the drop, so the energy never reaches the cloth and the wash quietly fails. Foam also escapes past the door seal, and the machine's pressure sensor reads the suds and adds rinse after rinse to clear them, which lengthens the programme, wastes water and wastes the heater. A tub powder in a front loader does all three. Ours measures 40 mm foam height at 30 seconds, 1 g per litre at 30 C, by the Ross-Miles method, against 150 mm for our own top-load powder, and both figures are printed on both packs so the comparison is checkable. The other half of the arithmetic is the dose. This powder is Rs 50 a kilo dearer than the top-load one and it wants 30 g a load instead of 40 g, so it costs Rs 9.06 a wash against Rs 9.96. Dearer per kilo, cheaper per wash, and that gap is the entire argument for reading the dose before the price.

• Full surfactant system named and it adds to 19 percent: C12-15 alcohol ethoxylate 7 EO at 11 percent, sodium linear alkylbenzene sulphonate 6 percent, sodium C12-14 alkyl polyglucoside 2 percent, deliberately nonionic-heavy because nonionics foam less
• Foam controlled by named agents, not by luck: sodium salts of C16-18 fatty acids at 2 percent and a silicone antifoam at 0.3 percent
• Enzymes with figures: protease 0.5 percent, amylase 0.2 percent, cellulase 0.1 percent, working from 30 C so the heating element does far less
• The cellulase is worth an honest word. It shaves the loose surface fibrils off cotton, which is why it removes pilling and restores colour depth, and over a great many washes that same action thins the cloth very slightly. It is a real trade and we would rather name it
• Builder is soda ash 18 percent, sodium citrate 6 percent and zeolite 4A 8 percent. Phosphate is zero, in a country that does not require it to be
• Measured pH 10.2 in a 1 percent solution at 27 C
• No optical brightener, no chlorine bleach, no phosphate, no dye, no perfume, no preservative, since a dry powder needs none
• Uncoloured granules. There are no blue speckles because a speckle is a dye that does no work
• No perfume, so a load comes out smelling of nothing at all, and the drum stays free of the sticky perfume-and-softener film that causes the smell people blame on the machine