Porous surfaces, such as those of carpets, clothing, tablecloths, napkins, automobile seats, athletic shoes, leather, suede, and certain metal and metal composites, to name only few, and hard surfaces such as concrete, stucco, metal signs, tile, wallpaper and wood floors, often receive deleterious deposits, stains, and graffiti. Such deposits vary widely in their identity. Some may be quite viscous, for example paints, greases, and sauces such as mustard, catsup, and mayonnaise. Others are more liquid in nature, such as pet stains, wines, soft drinks, ball point inks, marker inks, fountain pen inks, and printers inks. Still others may be more solid or pasty, including foods, especially proteinaceous foods, water-based adhesives, and latex-based paints. The term "deposit" includes all of the foregoing, including stains caused by liquids and solids.
Some types of hard surfaces often have deposits respective to their storage and preservation. Examples are oily compositions to protect them from corrosion, residues from cutting oils for which a degreaser is usually needed, and dust on disc brakes which must be removed.
The above recitation exemplifies a broad range of materials which need to be cleaned of a broad range of deposits and stains. In response to this need, an equally wide range of cleaning compositions already exists in the market.
Generally speaking, commercial compositions are limited both in the range of their effectiveness, and also as to how efficient they really are for their intended purpose. If one intends to remove a wide range of kinds of deposits, he is likely to find a nearly-equal number of formulations to buy for the purpose. In addition, some of the stains and deposits are usually only partially removed, and with risk to the material being cleaned. On the consumer market today, for example, there is no known composition which will remove marking pen dye from a white tablecloth. This product will.
Furthermore, many existing compositions are objectionable from an environmental standpoint. This compostion is water-based, and is environmentally acceptable.
It is an object of this invention to provide a water-based environmentally acceptable, biodegradable cleaning composition which can be used to remove a surprisingly wide range of types of deposits and stains. Any residue of these compositions which might remain on the surface, or in the substrate underlying it, will not adversely affect the user or the surface to which it was applied. It has proved to be a considerable surprise to observe how many types of really difficult stains and deposits these compositions can remove, with little or no remaining evidence that there ever had been a stain or a deposit, or that the composition ever had been applied, all without damage to the material being cleaned.
It is another object to provide a small family of related compositions, with somewhat different concentrations of some of the same ingredients, which between them can attend to all but a few of the types of deposits and stains which predictably will be experienced. As few as two or three such related individual formulations will provide nearly optimum removal of a very broad assortment of deposits.