Laundry Detergents- How Enzymes are Changing Your Wash?
Home / Laundry Detergents- How Enzymes are Changing Your Wash?
18 September 2010- During the last two decades, there has been a great rise in the number of laundry detergents that contain enzymes. The race to formulate the most effective and distinctive laundry detergents has lead to the formulations, which contain multiple enzymes. Most of the successful laundry cleaning products brands of these days contain two, three or even four different types of enzymes.
Enzymes are proteins, which can be found in different living organisms, including - man, animals, plants and microorganisms. Nature, including the human digestive system, relies on enzymes to break down fats, starches and proteins. The similar type of enzyme can be used in detergents to break down the stains, which bind to fabrics.
While the nature provides us an amazing variety of enzymes, it is very difficult to identify enzyme solutions for a particular problem. Most of the industrial applications necessitate strict demands on the conditions under which an enzyme can operate, including - pH level, temperature, and the presence of harsh chemicals that present the challenges to the stability and performance of enzyme.
By utilizing expert knowledge and understanding of protein chemistry and modern protein engineering, different new and improved versions of naturally occurring enzymes can be formulated. Directed molecular evolution can extend the available formulations of these enzymes into an almost infinite number of protein structures designed to meet the various demands of modern industrial processes.
Fermentation to design and formulate industrial enzymes begins with a vial of frozen or dried microorganisms known as a production strain. Industrial enzyme fermentation can use bacteria such as Bacillus, fungi like Aspergillus or Trichoderma, and the yeast species, such as Saccharomyces cerevisiae. These production organisms have the basic machinery, which is required to produce big amounts of protein and non-pathogens.
Downstream processing follows enzyme fermentation that is a term used to describe the operations that are performed to convert and transform the fermented product into a concentrated and fermented product ready for final formulation. First, the enzyme should be extracted from the fermentation biomass, which is attained by different chemical treatments of the fermentation broth to ensure efficient extraction that is followed by the removal of biomass using either filtration or centrifugation.
After the enzyme extraction, the enzyme is concentrated using evaporation or semi-permeable membranes. In the case of products that demand high purity, the downstream processes sometimes require a special step to remove impurities. This is usually done using techniques, such as selective precipitation or adsorption of impurities, or advanced crystallization to obtain high purity enzymes.
The last and final stage of enzyme production is formulation that determines the form and activity of enzyme. Further processing can be done to formulate and produce enzyme blends and special formulations.
Enzyme help in achieving superior cleaning performance that require attacking stains. Typically, the original enzymes to be added to laundry detergent powder were proteases. However, in today's world of cutthroat competition, the most effective detergent brands contain other types of enzymes apart from proteases in order to provide superior cleaning performance. The list of such enzyme types include
However, a particular blend of enzyme types that can be used in detergent formulations varies according to geographical conditions, such as water temperature and the hardness of water.
Each of the enzyme types mentioned above is effective enough to attack a particular type of stain or soil. The inclusion of different enzymes in a detergent allows it to tackle a wide range of profile types. In addition, multiple enzymes also perform in a complimentary manner to remove and clean tough stains or soils that are made up of different types of substances. For example, a food stain may contain protein, starch and lipid (fat) demanding the combined actions of these enzymes for its complete elimination.
Simply, more enzymes mean a cleaner wash and whiter whites, both long-standing key demands of consumers. But there are several other benefits for consumer too. By virtue of their very nature, enzymes are highly energy-efficient molecules and their cleaning action ensure that even in a short wash cycle, clothes are completely cleaned. Now days, enzymes can be used to eliminate the number one complaint of consumers, i.e. the need for repeated wash - by performing to remove these stubborn fatty food stains in the first wash.
And then there is another good news - heavily soiled items do not necessarily require a hot wash any more. A special characteristic of enzyme detergents is that they facilitate in reducing the household energy bills by reducing the washing temperature without affecting the cleaning performance. Therefore it is not surprising that the far-flung use of enzymes in detergents products has already brought about a broad shift in lowering the wash temperatures.
Biotech companies that offer many types of products in industries ranging from food to clothing, endeavor to assist different laundry products brands and companies get the perfect blend of enzymes in their detergent products. In the well-equipped laboratories of these biotech companies, the technical service teams perform several wash trials to determine the correct dose and types of enzyme to be included to the basic detergent formulations.
With the increase in the concentration of an enzyme in a single-enzyme detergent, the cleaning performance improves, however it ultimately reaches a point where no additional benefit can be achieved. At this point, any further improvement in the cleaning performance can only be achieved by adding new enzymes to the detergent formulation.
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