What is an Azeotrope? Why Are They Important?
Many of the MicroCare cleaning products are azeotropes, and that's important because it lowers your costs, boosts cleaning effectiveness and enhances worker safety — all very good things. So the next question is, how does an azeotrope do that? For that answer, we have to go back to Chemistry 101. 
But when we add that precise amount of 5% ethanol, the boiling temperature suddenly drops. This is very odd and unexpected. The two chemicals are still separate and distinct in the mixture, but when mixed together they jointly lower their combined boiling point.
Most importantly, as an azeotropic mix, the two constituents will boil off at the same rate. If we boil the mixture in a beaker and measure the fumes coming off the boiling liquid, we would notice that the mixture of the ingredients is still at the same 95:5 ratio. When we chill those fumes and condense the material back into a liquid state it again will have the same 95:5 mixture ratio. In fact, no matter what we do, the mixture always stays at the 95:5 proportions. This means we have created an azeotrope. With azeotropes the ingredients never separate.
Watch a video on azeotropes here.
There is a bit of magic to making azeotropes. Not all liquids form azeotropes because the density, boiling point and surface tension all has to be exactly right. Finding a true azeotrope is very difficult, but the Critical Cleaning Chemists at MicroCare have formulated a number of them for vapor degreasing including:
Tergo™ XCF3 Superior Cleaning Fluid and Degreaser
Tergo™ CCA Braod Range Degreasing Fluid
Tergo™ PF105 High Purity & Ionic Static Remover
Tergo™ PF100-IPA IPA Based High Purity & Ionic Static Remover
Azeotropic behavior allows engineers to deliver the benefits of a mixture with the convenient handling and storage of a single compound. There are three main benefits of azeotropes:
Sadly, not all azeotropes are created equal. To a finicky chemist, a perfect “true” azeotrope only exists at a single temperature and specific pressure where the azeotropic behavior is observed. But “close” can be good enough. Many products are successfully marketed today which are not “perfect azeotropes” but near-azeotropes.
Near-azeotropes, also known as "azeotrope-like", can be repeatedly evaporated, condensed, and recycled without changing the blend’s composition or other properties. Even though it is technically just a mixture of different chemicals and does not meet the exact technical description of an azeotrope, a near-azeotropic solvent behaves as if it were a single pure component solvent rather than a solvent mixture. These cleaners are so close to being azeotropes that they exhibit stable azeotropic behavior.
These cleaners are not perfect azeotropes in the strictest definition of the word, but offer azeotrope-like stability and can deliver the performance, safety and time-saving convenience of single-solvent operations under almost all conditions. Some popular examples of near-azeotropes or azeotrope-like cleaning fluids include:
Tergo™ GCF General Cleaning Fluid
Tergo™ SFR Flux and Ionics Cleaning Fluid
Tergo™ XCF2 Specialty Cleaning Fluid, Flux Remover and Degreaser
Tergo™ HDF Heavy Degreasing Fluid
Opteon™ SF80 Specialty Cleaning Fluid
Lastly, sometimes there is no single solvent or azeotrope which is sufficiently strong to get the job done. In this case, some customers switch to using a bi-solvent or a co-solvent system. These systems use two solvents — one aggressive cleaning solvent, and one milder rinsing — to remove the most difficult soils. The Tergo™ Chlorine-Free Cleaning Fluid is one such co-solvent product. For more details about co-solvents, contact MicroCare.
Azeotropes Explained
An azeotrope is best described as “a constant boiling blend.” To be an azeotrope, the material has to be a mixture or a blend of at least two different compounds. For demonstration purposes, let's suppose we test an unscientific mixture that is 95% water and 5% ethanol.
Now let’s consider the boiling point of these materials. The boiling point of water is about 100 degrees Celsius.But when we add that precise amount of 5% ethanol, the boiling temperature suddenly drops. This is very odd and unexpected. The two chemicals are still separate and distinct in the mixture, but when mixed together they jointly lower their combined boiling point.
Most importantly, as an azeotropic mix, the two constituents will boil off at the same rate. If we boil the mixture in a beaker and measure the fumes coming off the boiling liquid, we would notice that the mixture of the ingredients is still at the same 95:5 ratio. When we chill those fumes and condense the material back into a liquid state it again will have the same 95:5 mixture ratio. In fact, no matter what we do, the mixture always stays at the 95:5 proportions. This means we have created an azeotrope. With azeotropes the ingredients never separate.
Watch a video on azeotropes here.
MicroCare Azeotropes
There is a bit of magic to making azeotropes. Not all liquids form azeotropes because the density, boiling point and surface tension all has to be exactly right. Finding a true azeotrope is very difficult, but the Critical Cleaning Chemists at MicroCare have formulated a number of them for vapor degreasing including:Tergo™ XCF3 Superior Cleaning Fluid and Degreaser
Tergo™ CCA Braod Range Degreasing Fluid
Tergo™ PF105 High Purity & Ionic Static Remover
Tergo™ PF100-IPA IPA Based High Purity & Ionic Static Remover
Azeotrope Benefits
Azeotropic behavior allows engineers to deliver the benefits of a mixture with the convenient handling and storage of a single compound. There are three main benefits of azeotropes:- Perhaps the most important benefit of an azeotrope is the unexpected ability to mix flammable and nonflammable ingredients to produce a stable nonflammable mixture. This is an amazing chemical phenomenon. Imagine mixing flammable products — like IPA alcohol — into a non-flammble chemical and yet still retain the convenient handling of a nonflammable chemical. In contrast, if a product is merely a mix of chemicals, when there is a spill of the solvent on the factory floor some flammable chemicals may evaporate faster than other chemicals, creating a cloud of flammable vapors above the spill. This is so important for safety that the process is simulated during the 'Tag Closed Cup' flammability test.
- Another benefit of azeotropes is that they are very easy to distill and recover. If the solvent in a vapor degreaser is an azeotrope, then the solvent can be boiled and recycled. Meanwhile, while the contamination -- the non-azeotropic stuff mixed into the solvent, such as fluxes, oils, water, and such -- stay 'trapped' at the bottom of the machine. In effect, using azeotropic solvents allows us to trap and concentrate the contamination using distillation instead of using filters and membranes and such.
- Lastly, azeotropes permit the 'tweaking' of a blend to obtain unique physical properties which makes the blends useful across a broad range of applications. For example, if you have a very mild cleaner, but add some other ingredients in azeotropic proportions, you can make a blend that is a very strong cleaner, or safe to use or really inexpensive. In other words, azeotropes allow us to customize cleaning fluids to fit almost any application or budget. The possibilities are almost limitless.
About Near-Azeotropes and Co-Solvents
Sadly, not all azeotropes are created equal. To a finicky chemist, a perfect “true” azeotrope only exists at a single temperature and specific pressure where the azeotropic behavior is observed. But “close” can be good enough. Many products are successfully marketed today which are not “perfect azeotropes” but near-azeotropes.Near-azeotropes, also known as "azeotrope-like", can be repeatedly evaporated, condensed, and recycled without changing the blend’s composition or other properties. Even though it is technically just a mixture of different chemicals and does not meet the exact technical description of an azeotrope, a near-azeotropic solvent behaves as if it were a single pure component solvent rather than a solvent mixture. These cleaners are so close to being azeotropes that they exhibit stable azeotropic behavior.
These cleaners are not perfect azeotropes in the strictest definition of the word, but offer azeotrope-like stability and can deliver the performance, safety and time-saving convenience of single-solvent operations under almost all conditions. Some popular examples of near-azeotropes or azeotrope-like cleaning fluids include:
Tergo™ GCF General Cleaning Fluid
Tergo™ SFR Flux and Ionics Cleaning Fluid
Tergo™ XCF2 Specialty Cleaning Fluid, Flux Remover and Degreaser
Tergo™ HDF Heavy Degreasing Fluid
Opteon™ SF80 Specialty Cleaning Fluid