The History Of Dry Cleaning Solvents

By Author: Larry Katherine White
Total Articles: 14
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Washing clothes is one of our daily works which must be done and almost every people use some procedures to clean their clothes. Cleaning clothes is pretty time consuming and painstaking job, but we have to do it almost every day. People nowadays use different types of clothes made of different materials. Due to which a single cleaning process is not enough to clean all the clothes at a time. You can use washing machine or hand wash for some type of hardy clothes; but if your cloth is delicate like the fabric garments or made of leather etc. then it is best to use the dry cleaning methods. The delicate garments can lose their properties or color is washed roughly in the washing machine or even during hand wash. Dry cleaning is a method of cleaning clothes without using soap or water; in this process people use certain solvents and other dry cleaning products to clean the clothes. The most important material needed for the dry cleaning of garments is the dry cleaning solvent; this liquid can clean any sort dirt or stain from the clothes.

The process of dry cleaning started in the mid 19th century. At that time, people ...
... used kerosene or other such volatile liquids like gasoline or naphtha as the dry cleaning solvents. These liquids used to work well for cleaning the clothes, but due to the flammability of these solvents, they were slowly discarded. As these liquids were quite strong, they caused harm for the clothes. Years later, the scientists discovered other dry cleaning solvents which were less volatile and worked real good in cleaning the clothes. These dry cleaning solvents became pretty popular in United States at that time. However, after the World War I, a new cleaning solvent came to use, and this is the perchloroethylene. This solvent is the most popular and most used dry cleaning solvent used so far. The perchloroethylene or perc had excellent cleaning properties; it was stable, non-flammable and was gentle to the delicate garments. Perchloroethylene was considered as the ideal dry cleaning solvent and was used for several years, until it was found to be very harmful for the human beings.

Nowadays, most dry cleaning companies have banned the use of this perchloroethylene; other solvents are used in its place. Most dry cleaning companies use the organic solvents like liquid carbon dioxide for the cleaning the clothes by this method. The organic dry cleaning solvents work great as cleaning solvents and they are also not harmful to the human body. Liquid Silicon or D5 is another such organic dry cleaning agent which has replaced perchloroethylene; it is also used extensively all over the world. Besides the dry cleaning companies, several people have also started dry cleaning their clothes at home. They use the necessary solvents and other cleaning products and do their cleaning at home themselves. Dry cleaning at home often costs a huge amount of money; which can be minimized easily by performing the dry cleaning methods at home.

Cleaning expensive clothes needs proper help from the dry cleaners companies, the dry cleaning supplies used by them helps a lot for dry cleaning the clothes.