Yeah, that's probably it...except the first line of the description on their site is: "The Citrus Wash & Gloss Car Wash takes the amazing cleaning power of citrus..."
Marketing marketing! For me, this would go a bit far given the lack of d-limonene but this sort of selling is about par for the course. Other suppliers are every bit as guilty with terms like 'nano'.
Another possibility is that the Citrus ingredient is just not listed in the MSDS. I believe that only potentially hazardous substances are required to be listed in the MSDS.
You are right about the hazardous components but unfortunately d-limonene (and other limonenes)
are hazardous. They are considerered flammable, irritant, sensitising and highly toxic to the aquatic environment. This all adds up to d-limonene needing to be identified at notably lower levels than many other hazardous ingredients. US regulations I cannot be certain of but, unless there is less than 0.1%, CG would be obligated to mention its presence on an MSDS for the EU.
You just have to conclude that the citrus component is very minor, if present at all and is being used for marketing rather than functionality.
Sodium Hydroxide is a degreaser. It is in APC+, W99, and a ton of other things. My guess is this is what is giving you the cleaning/stripping power.
I know that Citrus W&G is organic, if you accidentally leave a little in your foam cannon or diluted in water too long, it will rot and make the smell of death... Great post though! Glad is was revived. Thanks!
Sodium Hydroxide is a very powerful cleaner. It is extremely aggressive and actually reacts with many metals, stains plastics and can even cloud glass. It provides alkalinity. As stated above, the pH of the product is pH 8 so in this case the product is barely alkaline at all - by many measures it would be considered neutral. In this case the NaOH is there to counter the dodecylbenzene sulphonic acid, a very common approach in hand wash detergents. So in this case we can rule out the hydroxide as being effective. As a side note, products using sodium hydroxide as their sole alkalinity provider are something I advise against for high end automotive use. This is the 'cheap' way of providing alkalinity, it is very effective but many automobiles have finishes which are sensitive to it and there is the risk of damage. My view is that it is a bit of laziness to be using it - in effect it is a bit similar to the use of hydrofluoric wheel cleaners, inexpensive, highly effective but a sledgehammer approach which is simply not required most of the time. Caustic products are best reserved for heavy duty cleaning, almost all that we sell like this will be used for truck, commercial and industrial cleaning. Non-caustic alkaline products suffice almost everywhere else.
The smell - very odd. Almost every cleaner you use will have some level of organic, I struggle to come up with a common surfactant ingredient which is not organic. The smell, though, should not happen because there should be some chemical preservative present to stop it.
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hahaha
