Safe and Secure Detergents for Commercial Automatic Dishwashers

Restaurants, where large quantities of dishes must be washed, use commercial machines that can wash dishes in a as little as 60 seconds. These dishwashers operate with special alkaline dishwashing detergents that provide high cleaning power in a short time.
Alkaline detergents are safe as long as they are used in a timely and appropriate manner. However, the recent labor shortage has led to the diversification of staff (in nationality and age), making it difficult to secure adequate time for training.
To help solve this problem, Kao is working to develop neutral detergents that are safe to use for everyone and can remove dirt adequately.

Protein-rich egg yolk is typical of dirt that neutral detergents find difficult to remove. Yolk consists of a plasma phase (P phase: 80%), which is easily soluble in water, and a granule phase (G phase: 20%), which las low solubility in water. Research has revealed that the G phase, which accounts for only about 20%, stabilizes the yolk’s structure and makes it hard to clean off. By examining the G phase more closely, we found that the disulfide bond is one factor that allows the G phase to stabilize the structure.

From this, we developed a technology that enables neutral detergents to break the disulfide bond in seconds, something previously difficult to do, and succeeded in producing neutral detergents that offer the same cleaning power as alkaline detergents in a short time.
We aim to develop safe and secure products that anyone can use, including powerful detergents, concentrated and light detergents, and color-coded detergents that make them easy to identify.