Cleanzine: your weekly cleaning and hygiene industry newsletter 18th April 2024 Issue no. 1110
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Successful university lab testing of Empowered Water and Activate announced
EnviroTechnologies International (ETII), a US-based company that develops and markets green, natural and organic products for diverse industries, has this week announced successful laboratory test results of its Empowered Water Hypochlorous anolyte and its Activate protein surfactant solutions.
Testing demonstrated that extended surface coverage facilitated by the Activate protein surfactant products (a key product used by the company in various applications), did not impact the microbial kill efficacy of the Empowered Water Hypochlorous. This is an important part of the overall business opportunities for ETII as the combined annual market disinfectant solutions is estimated to grow to $1.6 billion in the US alone.
The Hypochlorous solution of Empowered Water is a stabilised electrolysed analytic water (HEW). HEW has seen regular use and application in many different medical, industrial and agricultural applications. HEW has been thoroughly tested and documented in laboratory experiments to exhibit consistent kill efficacy near 99.99% for a wide array of harmful bacteria within short exposure periods.
Implementation of HEW routinely occurs commercially in disinfecting applications and organic sanitising of food processing equipment. ETII's HEW is also used in apple orchards to control mould and mildew outbreaks. To enhance the effective coverage and dispersion of an HEW solution, the protein surfactant was proposed to reduce the surface tension of the solution to assist in the dispersal time and coverage area.
"In the past, we have always addressed the balance between exposure time and coverage," explains Randall Waters, director of operations for ETII. "To be effective, the Hypochlorous solution of Empowered Water must reside on the surface being sanitised for 12-30 seconds. The challenge is always ensuring that the solution fully covers the desired surface, whether that surface is the outside of an apple or the inside of a tanker.
"By using our natural and safe Activate surfactant, we hoped to get significantly more surface area coverage at a faster rate, thereby ensuring that we are in the Hypochlorous 'Kill Zone' for the effective time periods.
"The team at Montana State University LRES Laboratory ran the study to measure the efficacy of the solutions on the most common and had to address food related bacteria."
Brett Sather, of Sather Science Services, adds: "Activate is an enhanced protein surfactant that lowers interfacial and surface tension of fluid solutions. Specifically, addition of Activate would provide for more thorough HEW spreading, distribution and penetration when applied to surface areas such as fruit and/or vegetables.
"Sather Science Services worked with Montana State personnel in defining, running, measuring and compiling the tests.
"It was our intent to ensure that the added physical properties of the protein surfactant had no impact on the microbial kill efficacy of the Hypochlorous solution."
Testing showed that the Hypochlorous/Activate solution held its antimicrobial values. The final test data showed that for all three bacteria tested, HEW+ Activate proved to have significant biocidal effects: i.e. there were no viable counts of live bacteria remaining on the test plates with the highest contamination levels. Bacteria levels decreased by approximately six orders of magnitude for Escherichia and Salmonella and five orders of magnitude for Listeria, indicating that cell survival after a 30 second exposure to HEW+ Activate was at or approached zero.
"This experiment is similar to most other disinfecting plate tests and cannot claim 100% disinfecting but does indicate the theoretical maximum viable live counts could not exceed .1% or give the solution a 99.9% effective kill," adds Brett. "And, it does show that the combination of Empowered Water Hypochlorous and Activate is as effective a disinfectant as pure Hypochlorous while providing the improvements in solution coverage added by the Activate Protein Surfactant."
Empowered Water anolyte is a safe and green electrolysed water solution made from adding a very controlled saline formula to a purified water stream and processing the solution with a controlled electrical current. These solutions have been used for the past 15 years in everything from cleaning home carpets to cleaning food and beverage facilities.
4th May 2017