Chemical Engineering April 2022 - 20

Newsfront
More Sustainable Cleaning
Solutions Increase Efficiency
Processors no longer need to sacrifice efficiency or effectiveness when selecting eco-friendly
housekeeping methods
C
ommitment to environmental,
social and corporate-governance
programs
coupled with a pandemicinduced
need for more effective
sanitizing are forcing chemical, pharmaceutical,
food-and-beverage and
other processors to reevaluate their
industrial housekeeping products,
practices and programs. Fortunately,
today's more-sustainable methodologies
not only effectively tackle common
housekeeping issues, but also
reduce cleaning-related downtime.
It's no surprise that every processor
has different needs and challenges
when it comes to tidying the
facility; the chemical sector has a
different set of housekeeping challenges
than the food-and-beverage
industry, whose needs differ
from
the pharmaceutical industry, whose
problem areas vary from those in
the oil-and-gas or plastic industries.
" Each industry has different regulations
in place regarding cleaning
practices, with some more stringent
than others. Each industry has different
equipment that comes with
TOMI Environmental
FIGURE 1. TOMI's SteraMist disinfection products use ionized hydrogen
peroxide (iHP) technology. Available surface units, fogging systems and
cordless backpack units provide disinfection and decontamination via an
active ingredient of 7.8% H2O2
20
its own cleaning requirements and
challenges, " notes Steve Wilson, applications
development director, with
Cold Jet (Loveland, Ohio; www.coldjet.com).
" And, each industry has
different contaminants or soils and
different substrates. "
" This means every processor has
to figure out the right recipe and
method for removing their particular
soils from their particular substrate in
a way that meets applicable guidelines
and regulations, " he continues.
In the past, this was often accomplished
via solvents or water
(or both), but processors are moving
away from these housekeeping
methods. " Almost all processors are
beginning to look at their environmental
and social impact and trying
to find ways to reduce greenhouse
gas (GHG) emissions. They are finding
that many of the solvents used for
housekeeping are sources of HFCs
[hydrofluorocarbons], CFCs [chlorofluorocarbons]
and other man-made
gases and want to avoid that, " Wilson
says. " They also want to reduce
water use in their plants due to issues
surrounding
water scarcity, as
well as the cost
of raw water and
water treatment.
And, since traditional
industrial
cleaning and sanitizing
methods use
a lot of water (about
40% of water use
in industrial facilities
is attributed to
cleaning), processors
are trying to
reduce or eliminate
aqueous-intensive
cleaning in their facilities. "
Acuren
In
addition to the environmental impetus,
the pandemic heightened the
need for better sanitation methods.
" Not only can traditional, manual
cleaning methods be time-consuming
and introduce cross contamination,
but during the pandemic, we
learned that manual methods were
not doing a good job killing viruses,
bacteria and other contaminants, "
says Halden Shane, CEO and chairman
of the board with TOMI Environmental
Solutions (Frederick, Md.;
www.tomimist.com). " For this reason,
they are looking for methods
that are not only greener, but are also
more mechanical, which also ticks
the box of being more efficient. "
Moving to mechanical methods
" Processors want to spend as little
time as possible cleaning and disinfecting,
so they are looking for ways
to clean both process equipment
and general-use areas in a way that
maximizes efficiency while still providing
a high level of sanitation, " explains
Shane. " For this reason, there is a shift
from manual to mechanical methods
that increase both efficiency and environmental
and social ethicacy. "
For example, TOMI's SteraMist disinfection
products use ionized hydrogen
peroxide (iHP) technology. Each
product, including a surface unit, an
environmental fogging system and a
cordless backpack unit, provides versatile
disinfection and decontamination
via an active ingredient of 7.8%
H2O2 (Figure 1).
The patented Binary Ionization
Technology activates and ionizes a
7.8% H2O2 sole active-ingredientbased
solution into a fine mist/fog
known as iHP. Ionized hydrogen
peroxide contains a high concentration
of reactive oxygen species
(ROS), consisting mostly of hydroxyl
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APRIL 2022
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Chemical Engineering April 2022

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