Kitchen Degreaser

Details

Baked ghee and oil on a chimney filter, a gas hob and the tile behind it is the hardest job in an Indian kitchen, and a gentle formula will not touch it. This is properly alkaline at a measured pH 11.2, because alkali is what saponifies hard fat back into something water can carry away, and no amount of pleasant chemistry substitutes for that. A shelf that pretends every product on it is mild is telling the same kind of lie as a food shelf that pretends everything is pure, so the plain version is this: at pH 11.2 this attacks skin protein on prolonged contact, it will sting badly in an eye, and it is not a product to use bare-handed. Wear nitrile gloves. Open a window or run the exhaust. Do not use it if the skin on your hands is broken or you have eczema there, and never decant it into an unlabelled bottle.

• Alkalinity from named salts and no caustic soda: potassium carbonate 5 percent, sodium metasilicate pentahydrate 2 percent, plus sodium gluconate 1 percent as a chelant so it still works in hard water
• Surfactants 6 percent, both named: C12-15 alcohol ethoxylate 7 EO at 4 percent and sodium C12-14 alkyl polyglucoside 2 percent
• Measured pH 11.2 at 27 C, printed on the bottle
• No caustic soda, no chlorine bleach, no phosphate, no butyl glycol or other glycol ether solvent, no d-limonene solvent load, no dye, no perfume, no quats
• No preservative, and for a real reason rather than as a free-from claim: nothing grows at pH 11.2
• Aluminium is the important warning, and it is the one the category usually buries. An alkaline cleaner dissolves the protective oxide layer on aluminium and then attacks the metal itself, giving off hydrogen and leaving a dull grey pitted surface. A great many Indian chimney mesh filters are bare aluminium. Stainless baffle filters are not
• How to tell them apart: an aluminium mesh filter is noticeably light and soft enough to dent with a thumbnail. A stainless baffle filter is heavy and rigid
• So the method splits. On a stainless baffle filter, spray both sides, stand 10 minutes, rinse under a hot tap. On an aluminium mesh filter, spray, wait no more than 3 minutes, rinse immediately and thoroughly, do not soak, and accept that repeated use will dull it over the years
• On a hob or the tile behind it, spray, wait 3 to 5 minutes so the alkali has time to work, wipe, then follow with a damp cloth
• Also keep it off unsealed natural stone, painted wood, and anodised or coated aluminium trim
• No germ-kill claim. A high pH does suppress a lot of things, and does is not a claim: a claim needs a named organism, a contact time and a test such as EN 13697, and we have not run one
• At about 8 ml a hob clean it is 62 uses from the trigger bottle at Rs 3.53, and 125 from the 1 litre refill at Rs 2.79. The refill fills the 500 ml bottle twice