Can we revisit the
Finish Jet-Dry debate? I’ve always wondered how some Jet-Dry would affect the performance of a Klaudio ultrasonic machine. In theory, it seems like a simple (and ideal) additive. Borrowed from another site (interjected with my own commentary)…
Finish Jet-Dry rinse aid has a bunch of stuff in it, but it isn’t complicated, really. Here’s a rundown of the contents:
- Water is necessary to dissolve all the other stuff.
- Alcohol ethoxylate is a nonionic (uncharged) surfactant that helps the water slide off your dishes better and thus helps them dry faster. For record cleaning, this sounds like a good thing.
- Sodium polycarboxylate is an anti-redeposition polymer that wraps itself around the crud that the dishwasher just washed off so that the bits don’t get stuck again on your dishes. For a ultrasonic machine like a Klaudio (which dried the LP with a fan), this also sounds like a good thing.
- Citric acid, which RB (the company that makes Jet-Dry) calls a complexing / sequestering agent, is really good at grabbing calcium ions out of hard water. Calcium can bind with surfactants and keep them from cleaning and rinsing dishes, so citric acid acts as kind of a sacrificial lamb to keep calcium from interfering. Since we're generally using distilled water, this issue should be minimal.
- Sodium cumene sulfonate is another surfactant but with an electric charge, so it’s a bit better at breaking water’s surface tension on your dishes than alcohol ethoxylate, but it’s also more foamy. Foam is bad in a rinse aid (and, for a ultrasonic machine like a Klaudio), so that’s why such products use both kinds of surfactant.
- Tetrasodium EDTA is a chelating agent. EDTA is short for ethylenediaminetetraacetic acid. It’s this funky-looking molecule that wraps its four arms around dissolved minerals in the water (such as calcium). The word chelate comes from the Greek word for “claw,” so you can imagine this molecule sinking its claws into minerals and whisking them away, similar to what citric acid does. Again, this seems like a good additive.
- Methylisothiazolinone and methylchloroisothiazolinone (aka MI and MCI) are both preservatives, meaning they keep bacteria from growing in your bottle of rinse aid. Both are capable of causing skin allergies and are sensitizers, meaning that if you’re exposed to them over and over again, you can develop an allergy. But since rinse aid doesn’t sit on your skin and washes away completely from your dishes, I wouldn’t worry about it here.
- CI Acid Blue 9 is dye. It makes the rinse aid blue. Why does it need to be blue? I have no idea, although colored solutions are easier to see in that little rinse-aid compartment.
Now, I know there's been some concern about the acidity of Finish Jet Dry, but
according to the SDS, the pH is 2.8 to 3.2 [Conc. (% w/w): 100%], so at at 1000:1 dilution ratio, the pH would approach (but not reach) 7. Correct?
Well...someone had to try it. But what's a repeatable test? I'm not saying the following is definitive (or even valid), but here's what I've done and my very, very early conclusions...
I've noticed that the Klaudio's KD-CLN-LP200 isn't very good at removing fingerprints from an LP, so I pulled out my Hi-Fi News Analog Test LP, wiped the side of my nose, and put a greasy fingerprint on the blank area between tracks 5 and 6 on Side 1.
To cut to the chase, after a 5-minute clean cycle with a 1000:1 dilution ratio (1 ml Finish Jet-Dry to 1 liter of distilled water), the fingerprint was completely gone. Distilled water alone will *not* remove the greasy finger print. An approximate 2000:1 dilution ratio wouldn't *completely* remove the fingerprint. I think an approximate 1500:1 to 1200:1 dilution ratio *could* do it, but 1000:1 is easier to mix (three 1/4 teaspoons per gallon of distilled water which is 1024:1).
Now, I'm not a chemist...so I'm throwing this out there for someone far smarter than I to comment. Thoughts?
