A Greener Clean: Electrolysed water & how it works

 

By Rayn Lakha

Believe it or not, your cleaning obsession is damaging your health and the planet. 

Yes, I know that good hygiene and thorough sanitisation have been absolutely essential over the last year and a half (and still are), but there are numerous hidden downsides that you might not be so happy about. Don’t be in a rush to hurl your dettol and Mr Muscle bottles in the bin just yet though, because today we’ll be talking about a technology so amazing, it’s shocking that everyone isn’t using it! Even better, you can start using it today. I am, of course, talking about electrolysed water. 

1. What is electrolysed water, and how is it made?

2. Is it really any good? - how it kills pathogens.

3. What about personal and environmental safety?

4. Why you shouldn’t use common cleaning products.

5. Disadvantages to electrolysed water

What exactly is electrolysed water though, and how is it formed?

Well, the name is a little misleading. A more accurate description would be “electrolysed sodium chloride solution mixed with vinegar”, but I suppose that’s not so good for marketing. This isn’t just a vinegar cleaner though, and the chemistry behind it isn’t as complicated as one might assume.

The cleaner consists of three compounds, two of which are then chemically altered through the passing of an electric current to create an extremely effective, environmentally friendly, safe multi-purpose cleaner, made right at home on your countertop!

1. Salt (Sodium Chloride - NaCl)

2. Water (H2O)

3. Vinegar (acetic acid)

Let’s ignore the vinegar for now. 

Imagine a beaker full of water with two electrodes. The two electrodes are turned off right now so they do not affect anything, and we have our salt next to the beaker. Randomly however, some water (H2O) will split (dissociate) into positive hydrogen ions and negative hydroxide ions. 

Now we turn on the electrodes, and add some salt. The sodium chloride (salt) will dissociate (split) into positive sodium ions and negative chloride ions. 

As you may remember from school, opposite electric charges attract each other, and now that the electrodes are on, the positive sodium and hydrogen ions are attracted to the negative electrode, and the negative chloride and hydroxide ions are attracted to the positive electrode.

Electrons are negative. Negative ions like chloride want to lose an electron to become neutral, whilst positive ions like hydrogen ions have too few electrons, and want to gain an electron to become neutrally charged. 

Therefore, chloride ions lose electrons to the positive battery electrode, and hydrogen ions gain electrons from the negative battery electrode, forming chlorine and hydrogen gas.

You may be wondering why the sodium and hydroxide ions don’t do the same thing - well the less reactive an ion is, the more easily it gains/loses electrons to become neutral. 

Hydrogen ions are less reactive than sodium ions, and chloride ions are less reactive than hydroxide, and so the less reactive ions (hydrogen and chloride) become neutral, while the more reactive ions (sodium and hydroxide) do not, instead they remain in solution.

 So, we have hydrogen and chlorine gas being formed. The hydrogen gas simply bubbles out of the solution, but the chlorine gas reacts with the water to form hypochlorous acid (HOCl), which is the main disinfectant in the cleaner. 

You can see that as well as hypochlorous acid being formed, hydrogen and chloride ions are formed. This is not a problem, as they are merely attracted to the negative and positive battery electrode respectively, and repeat the earlier step, forming hydrogen and chlorine gas.

This process continues until either the battery is removed, or all the available chlorine has been reacted. 

So, we are left with the desired products: hypochlorous acid, and sodium hydroxide solution (referring to the sodium ions and hydroxide ions, which remain separate from each other)

“Then what was the purpose of the vinegar?”, you might be asking. Vinegar is acidic - it is actually acetic acid, and so it regulates the pH.

Keeping the pH in a certain range is essential, as if the pH is too high, the hypochlorous acid splits into hydrogen and hypochlorite ions, creating sodium hypochlorite solution (referring to the sodium and hypochlorite ions in our beaker), and if the pH is too low, the hypochlorous acid decomposes forming chlorine gas.

Since the hypochlorous acid is the desired disinfectant, we do not want this to occur, as the cleaner would become less effective, and more dangerous (sodium hypochlorite is the main constituent of corrosive bleach, and is a less effective antimicrobial agent than hypochlorous acid. Chlorine gas is poisonous).

The ideal pH is slightly acidic, around 5-6, and the correct concentration of vinegar maintains this.

As well as this, the acidic vinegar neutralises a large proportion of the alkaline hydroxide ions in the sodium hydroxide solution. This is helpful, as although sodium hydroxide is a useful detergent, a high concentration of it can be dangerous, especially around people with allergies or asthma, and irritating the skin and eyes. 

So overall:

Is it really any good? - How it kills pathogens.

Yes! 

The power of the cleaner mainly relies upon hypochlorous acid.

Hypochlorous acid is a powerful disinfectant (around 80 times more so than bleach). 

In fact, according to several independent studies, domestic electrolysed water cleaner is just as effective as bleach, formula 409 on grease, windex on glass, scrubbing bubbles on soap scum, resolve on rugs, and febreze on odours. It truly is an all in one multi purpose solution.

Hypochlorous acid also happens to be inside you right now. That is because your immune system uses it to fight off infection, attacking pathogens - clearly it’s effective! Hypochlorous acid binds to the outer shell of the pathogen, destroys its lipid cell membrane (or in the case of viruses, its protein shell) and disrupts the pathogen’s DNA/RNA through oxidation, doing this much faster than bleach due to its neutral electric charge, so it is not repelled by the charge of pathogen cell walls.

It is such a powerful sanitiser that it has even been recommended by the US EPA for use against Covid-19, which is particularly important right now.

What about safety?

Even better, unlike other cleaning agents such as bleach, hypochlorous acid is completely safe. 

It is non-toxic, non-corrosive, and because of its incredible efficacy and safety, has been approved by the FDA for use in wound healing and care, and eye care products. Indeed, it is so gentle that it is used as a disinfectant in hospitals in the US and Japan.

Remember the pH we talked about earlier? Since it is very close to neutral (7), this cleaner is far safer than cleaners with a more extreme pH, for instance bleach with a pH of 13, which is very unsafe to handle.

As well as being remarkably harmless to you, many domestic electrolysed water cleaners are outstandingly environmentally friendly. This is because they utilise no harmful chemicals which could damage wildlife through pollution, and they do not use single use plastic bottles - most kits feature a reusable bottle to make the cleaner in: Since you are making the cleaner at home rather than transporting it, there are also less greenhouse gas emissions due to fuel used in transportation.

Knowing this, you should feel safe using electrolysed water cleaners, secure in the knowledge that they are performing their function with admirable effectiveness and speed, all without harming you or the environment.

Why on earth shouldn’t I use my normal cleaning solutions though? 

I’ve been talking a lot about why electrolysed water cleaners are so great, so now let’s talk about why common cleaning agents aren’t ideal, and how electrolysed water cleaners could provide an equally effective, safer alternative.

Well, as I mentioned before, the consistent usage of common household cleaning products such as Mr Clean, formula 409, and domestos can be extremely detrimental to your health, and the environment. Let’s start with your health.

Many of these cleaning products contain harmful chemicals, most of which are classed as Volatile Organic Compounds (VOCs). When you spray a cleaning solution, tiny droplets containing these chemicals enter your respiratory system, causing irritation of the nose or throat, shortness of breath, coughs, nausea, and headaches/migraines. Clearly this is not very pleasant, but an even more serious symptom may be occurring without your knowledge: a recent study researching lung function found that regular cleaning indoors without proper safety precautions is comparable to smoking 20 cigarettes a day for 20 years! As you can probably tell, this is hugely detrimental to your health, and people with pre-existing respiratory conditions are more at risk than others. On a smaller scale, a common consequence of cleaning includes skin irritation, which is perhaps less severe than a respiratory condition, but still remarkably unpleasant.

As for the environment, there are three main detrimental impacts from the usage of many cleaning products.

• Those same VOCs that are so bad for your health aren’t very safe for plant or animal life either. When you spray these chemicals in your sink or toilet, they are rinsed down the drain as part of the wastewater, which then goes to a water treatment facility. Unfortunately, not all of the contaminants are removed here, and there can be a substantial negative effect on the wildlife in the rivers or lakes the chemicals eventually bleed into. 

• Alternatively, after you use the VOCs elsewhere in your home, they can evaporate and cause air pollution, which is not very healthy for fellow humans or the environment, contributing to global climate change. Furthermore, the humble cleaning bottle sitting in your cupboard went through numerous stages of transport to reach you, potentially using trucks, ships, and other transportation, all of which use finite fuel, and release carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, contributing to the enhanced greenhouse effect.

• Finally, the packaging involved with cleaning products, and the plastic bottles themselves are often disposed of in general waste containers, ending up in landfill sites where they do not biodegrade, but remain for incredibly long periods of time. Sometimes, the plastic packaging can end up elsewhere (such as in the oceans), where it harms wildlife.

So it’s clear that ordinary chemical cleaning products are not ideal. Fortunately, domestic electrolysed water cleaners solve many of these problems, and are just as, if not more effective than many common cleaning solutions!

Disadvantages of domestic electrolysed water cleaners 

At this point I’m sure you’re jumping up and down in excitement about electrolysed water, perhaps even calling your family to come and look (No? Really?), but unfortunately there are some issues with the usage of domestic electrolysed water cleaners. Overall however, they do not provide too much of a problem.

Firstly, you cannot buy electrolysed water cleaning mixtures in stores. This is because the shelf life of the actual cleaner is only around two weeks - after this the hypochlorous acid has dissipated, and so the cleaner is ineffective.

Fortunately, most companies who sell electrolysed water cleaners don’t sell the actual solution, instead they sell bottles containing electrodes, to which you add water and capsules containing the correct amount of salt and vinegar (or you measure and add your own), enabling you to produce the cleaner in the comfort of your own home. Unfortunately, this solution will still expire after two weeks, and so you should try and use most of the batch in this time (batches are generally a suitable size for this).

Secondly, the price. The upfront cost of such bottles is generally quite high - for instance the force of nature electrolysed water cleaner starting kit costs $56 (or around £40). While this is significantly more expensive than most single use chemical cleaners, in the long run it actually ends up costing less, as all you need to pay for from then on are capsules containing salt and vinegar, which are cheap, and easy to order on sites such as amazon. Indeed, force of nature electrolysed water cleaner noted that you can save up to 80% per ounce of cleaning solution compared with other prominent household cleaning brands, which over the long run can significantly reduce the cost of disinfecting your home. Additionally, since the product is multi-purpose, it can replace several of your current cleaning products, further benefiting your wallet.

Finally, there are a few companies which claim to sell products which use this technology, but which instead utilise other chemicals, which may not be so ideal. If you are considering purchasing a product with this technology, we would always advise you to carry out further research into their legitimacy.

              An example of a domestic electrolysed water cleaner

I hope you have enjoyed reading this post, and may even consider purchasing products with this technology yourself!

To learn more about sustainable technologies, whether they are on a domestic scale, industry wide, or even global and beyond, you can check out other articles on this blog.

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