Clean Informer Magazine Summer 2013 | Page 29

polymers will break away or shatter allowing the encapsulated soil to be removed. I feel that if the encap would just fall off and self shatter that it may also release the soil back into the car- pet. Remember we want the encapsulated soil to stay encapsulated. Carpets will appear to get even cleaner over the first few cycles of vacuuming as the residual soil is released and more light can penetrate the fiber surface. A very thin layer of the polymeric material should be left behind on the fiber surface and will continue to protect the fiber long after the initial cleaning and over many cycles of further routine vacuuming. When the thin nearly monolayer film is finally removed over time the carpet will begin to re soil at the same rate as if it had never been cleaned. Another feature to look for is a chemistry that will “rewet” and allow itself to be wet cleaned away during subsequent cleanings preventing any buildup of the chemistry. Micelle A micelle is an aggregate of surfactant molecules dispersed in a liqu colloid. A typical micelle in an aqueous solution forms an aggrega with the hydrophilic “head” regions in contact with the surroundi solvent, sequestering the hydrophobic tail regions in the micelle center The shape and size of the micelle is a function of the molecular geom etry of its surfactant molecules and the solution conditions such as factant concentration, temperature, ph and ionic strength. Application When surfactants are present above the CMC critical micelle concentration they can act as emulsifiers that will solubilize a compound normally insoluble in the solution being used. This oc- curs because the insoluble species can be incorporated into the micelle core, which is itself solu- bilized in the bulk solution by virtue of the head group’s favorable interactions with the solutions species.The most common example of this phenomenon is detergent