The use of household cleaning agents and abrasive cleaners is currently growing,
mainly due to the changing lifestyle, as people do not have time to wash the dishes by
hands anymore. Sometimes even soaking the stains takes too much time. Therefore, I
decided to analyse and compare the composition of different cleaning agents by using
powder diffraction method. The thesis also contains differences between our results and
the products already listed in the declaration.
X-ray powder diffraction is a technique used to characterize crystalline substances. The
sample is exposed to radiation with X-rays of a certain wavelength. The light interacts
with the sample and sends the diffractions of light into the electronic detector. When the procedure is over, powder patterns are obtained which can then be compared with each
other by the use of an appropriate computer programme (e. g. X’Pert HighScore Plus).
On the basis of comparison between the measured powder patterns with those collected
in PDF database by means of a suitable programme (e. g.Crystallographica Search-
Match) it can be identified which solids are present in the samples under study.
The analyses of the samples have shown that the abrasive cleaners most often contain
calcium carbonate as the main ingredient. However, in the case of dishwasher tabs it
was found out that the composition of different products is very similar and that they
have many ingredients in common. Sodium carbonate, sodium hydrogen carbonate,
sodium citrate dehydrate trinatrijev hidrogenkarbonat dihidrat and sodium percarbonate
are most commonly present. With the tablets, which were divided into two parts, i. e.
core and outer part, a difference in the composition of both parts was noticed.
Therefore, it can be predicted that also the functions of both parts differ during the
washing process in the dishwasher. In most cases product labels on the dishwasher
tablets contain deficient information or do not correspond to the results obtained on the basis of identification by powder diffraction.
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