The American Cleaning Institute (ACI)

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Soaps and detergents are essential to personal and public health. Through their ability to loosen and remove soil from a surface, they contribute to good personal hygiene; reduce the presence of germs that cause infectious diseases; extend the useful life of clothes, tableware, linens, surfaces and furnishings; and make our homes and workplaces more pleasant. Why Clean Over the course of history…
What is soap and how does it work? The sudsy stuff we use every day of our lives is a mystery to most of us. But behind our cleaning products is an array of scientific data and information. This science and chemistry helps to ensure our products work and are safe for you and your family to use. The resources below will walk through what it means to be clean and how the cleaning process works. For more information&…
The ingredients in your cleaning products fall into several different categories, added to provide different characteristics and cleaning functions. Each product formula is a careful balance of various ingredients that will work best for what you are trying to clean.For more information about the specific ingredients in a cleaning product, visit the manufacturer's website or look for the product in SmartLabel…
•    ACI Distinguished Paper Award Presented at AOCS Annual Meeting Research that could simplify how surfactants are used in recovering crude oil from oilfields and processing them in refineries has been recognized as the best paper published in 2018 in the Journal of Surfactants & Detergents.  Researchers from the FIRP laboratory at University of the Andes, Merida, Venezuela, authored the paper that was recognized…
ACI Distinguished Paper Award Presented at AOCS Annual Meeting Research that could be used to inform surfactant formulation has been recognized as the best paper published in 2023 in the Journal of Surfactants and Detergents.  The authors were recognized during the 2024 American Oil Chemists’ Society (AOCS) Annual Meeting, held April 28-May 1 in Montréal, Québec, Canada. The Distinguished Paper Award is an annual honor presented by the American Cleaning Institute® (ACI…
What is the history of soap? And where did cleaning come from? This history of soap is a long one, dating back thousands of years to Ancient Babylon. Humans have built on that knowledge to create the soaps and detergents we use to clean dishes, laundry, our homes and ourselves today. Evidence has been found that ancient Babylonians understood soap making as early as 2800 BC Archeologists have found soap-like material…
Findings Indicate that a European Model for Predicting Environmental Concentrations for Alkyl Sulfates is Overly Conservative Article Published in Environmental Sciences Europe A European Union model used to predict the environmental exposure of a major detergent ingredient is overly conservative and “significantly overestimates” effluent concentrations, new research shows. A study co-authored by the American Cleaning Institute (ACI), “Comparing the European Union System for the Evaluation…
Surfactants (yellow) cause water to lose surface tension, which is what keeps water separate from other materials Have you ever seen a bead of water sitting on a surface? This is because water has a property called surface tension. This tension causes water to form a bead on the surface of things like glass or fabric. You can see surface tension at work by placing a drop of water onto a counter top. The drop will hold its shape and will not spread. In order to clean the dirt…
The American Cleaning Institute (ACI) has enhanced and expanded its “Exploration Clean” online experience to further help teach middle-school students the science and chemistry behind cleaning. New features include: A new, interactive surfactant game – "Get the Dirt" Updated Science of Soap ebook Ingredients reimagined as Characters of the Cleaning Court This site relaunch is the next step in building educational modules for…
The use of the terms "natural" and "synthetic" to describe cleaning products has led to some confusion among consumers. The best advice is to avoid making assumptions about safety or performance based on a "natural" label alone. What do the terms "synthetic" and "natural" really mean…