Elevance Renewable Sciences, Inc., a company that creates specialty chemicals from natural oils, has added to its Elevance Clean product line to address the cleaning industry's growing supply-demand gap for d-limonene. Elevance Clean 1000 is a bio-based cleaning ingredient, especially for asphalt/tar removal and degreasing applications.
As the cleaning products industry moves toward more renewable solvents and ingredients for industrial, household and institutional applications, demand for d-limonene, which is extracted from citrus rind, is expected to continue increasing significantly. In contrast, there has been a steady decline in orange supply over the past two years as a result of disease affecting orange groves in the two major orange producing countries, the U.S. and Brazil. This long-term supply issue is posing a challenge for customers who rely on the functional benefits of d-limonene for use in green solvents and cleaning products.
"Elevance Clean 1000 is easily blended into d-limonene formulas because its HLB requirement is 11-13, very similar to that of d-limonene. Overall formulation costs can be reduced by blending Elevance Clean 1000 with d-limonene. Further, Elevance Clean 1000 also has specific product attributes that help formulators boost performance of d-limonene formulations," said a company spokesperson.
"Elevance Clean 1000 provides formulators and buyers with a way to address unstable citrus feedstock supply and price uncertainty while simultaneously improving the performance of their products," said Andy Corr, Elevance Senior Vice President, Consumer and Industrial Ingredients.
While Elevance Clean 1000 is also produced from natural oils, its feedstock supply is not affected or challenged by seasons, weather or other hard-to-control variables that impact the supply availability of d-limonene. Elevance Clean 1000 is supplied at commercial scale by a production capacity biorefinery in Gresik, Indonesia, and its availability will be bolstered by a second facility in Natchez, MS, now in the engineering phase.
Elevance's biorefineries are capable of running on multiple globally traded, renewable oil feedstocks, including palm, mustard, soybean, canola and, when they become commercially available, jatropha or algal oils.
Attributes of Elevance Clean 1000 reported by Elevance:
- Surpassing the solvency power of d-limonene as measured on the Kauri-butanol (Kb) scale, with Kb values for Elevance Clean 1000 at 99, compared to d-limonene at 67
- Demonstrating three times the performance of d-limonene in the Gardner Cleaning Test (ASTM D4488-95)
- Exhibiting excellent performance in non-mechanical immersion testing using a semi-aqueous formulation on lithium grease with a 5 percent micro-emulsion and a 20-minute dwell time
- Outperforming d-limonene at neutral pH, obviating the need for highly caustic cleaning products, and the need to preserve sensitive metal substrates
- Offering a flash point of 102°C
- Is safe for aviation-grade aluminum and other key structural alloys (e.g., galvanized steel, stainless steel, copper, brass, etc.).
For more information contact:
Elevance Renewable Sciences, Inc.
2501 Davey Rd.
Woodridge, IL 60517
866-625-7103
info@elevance.com
www.elevance.com
www.elevance.com