"Green Llama" did not just beat Cascade Platinum Plus
foxchapelresearch.substack.com62 points by searealist 4 days ago
62 points by searealist 4 days ago
I am loving this level of petty nerd fighting over detergents! My co-workers thought I was joking when I told them I have HOURS of high quality dishwasher content on YouTube.
Claiming that a leading brand was being beaten by a random formula made by a contractor is a big red flag. They tend to dominate Consumer Reports testing and this is a trend across detergents and cosmetics: the big manufacturers have the money to do original research and the scale to do stuff bit players just can't. Pantene is hated in hair salons but blinded end-user tea ing shows that it outperforms everything else on the market, for example.
But it's also true that making a good enough soap for a given task isn't hard. Otherwise you wouldn't have so many damn cosmetic products out there. The delta just isn't that significant and plenty of people are fine with bar soap for everything. So I'm not surprised that the llama detergent scored well on some tests.
TC really should have partnered with a detergent scientist to check his experimental setup first.
Can't wait for the YouTube drama over something so petty as dishwasher detergent and the prewash!
> They chose 20 g of Cascade Complete Powder and 20 g of EcoGeek / Green Llama’s detergent. While I do not own the standard, I found some documentation to suggest that this is non-compliant with the relevant ASTM testing standards...
This is damning if true, isn't it? Especially given the conflict of interests. It reminds me of non-independent software benchmarks.
Although, to be charitable, if they were skewing the results on purpose, they could have just omitted the amounts altogether.
The rest of that section is super informative too as cascade contains fillers to make dosing easier.
EcoGeek instructs to use 15 grams which costs $0.65 per load. The 20g used is 133% this amount.
Cascade instructs to fill your dishwasher compartment which is about 71 grams and costs $0.23 per load. The 20g used is only 23% this amount.
a couple of most interesting parts
>Mechanical energy of the machine itself is responsible for 85% of the soil removal during the cleaning cycle; the detergent contributes the other 15%. Thermal energy is in a sense a secondary effect, contributing to the effectiveness of both the mechanical and chemical components of cleaning.
(From “Liquid Detergents, 2nd Edition”.)
>The primary role of pre-wash is to quickly and mechanically scrape off already loose particles and to dilute pigments before a hot main wash cycle. Already loose particles are a nuisance worth quickly clearing, and pigments can transfer to plastics at some typical wash temperatures, so pre-wash has some value. Tomato sauces (and turmeric) are insidious in this regard. Because I think this latter point might be novel, I’ll quote Whirlpool:
>Pink/orange discoloration of plastics is usually caused by carotenoid, a class of typically red/orange pigments found in foods such as tomatoes and turmeric. When carotenoids are dissolved in oils, they become easily absorbed into many plastics, mainly when heat is also applied. Because the resulting stain is absorbed into the plastic, water-based bleaches are ineffective.
>Pre-rinsing or using a Rinse Hold cycle will reduce the chance of staining. Regular use of a rinse cycle and an air-dry or energy-saving dry option will >reduce the likelihood of staining.
(From https://producthelp.whirlpool.com/Dishwashers/Dishwasher/Was...)
hence, running tap to get hot water into machine is actually counterproductive. dishwasher manufacturers know what they do when they run pre-wash with cold water
I was with you until you said this:
> Of all attempts to solve staining from carotenoids (and beta carotene specifically), a quick pre-wash or pre-rinse is the most effective that I know about. Neither heat nor detergent are needed for this, though, because the staining comes from easily rinsable soils, and because heat is actively problematic for this particular type of soil. And for loose soils, temperature and detergent are simply irrelevant.
> Accordingly, for pre-wash, temperature and detergent are unimportant.
A hot prewash helps loosen fat, that was his claim. Anecdotal experience suggests to me that he's right. So maybe try to disprove that instead?
> A hot prewash helps loosen fat, that was his claim. Anecdotal experience suggests to me that he's right. So maybe try to disprove that instead?
I don’t know who’s right but the article here already addresses this by pointing out that the short bursts of hot water in a prewash will never have as much impact as the sustained hot water wash in the main cycle.
The author of the post isn’t denying that a hot pre-wash will clean more than a cold pre-wash. What they’re saying is whether the hot pre-wash cleans more than a cold one is irrelevant to the final result since whatever the cold pre-wash doesn’t clean will almost certainly be cleaned in the longer, sustained, hot main cycle.
Hot water is more effective at removing/reducing fat, I think everyone agrees with that. But then the question becomes "Does something get cleaner if you have two hot washes instead of one cold and then one hot?". Personally for me, it feels obvious that if someone doesn't deny "hot water will clean more than a cold water", then they also shouldn't deny "Two hot washes makes something cleaner than one cold and one hot", mainly because that's more hot water, and we already agreed hot water cleans better. The more clean hot water you can apply, the cleaner that thing becomes, I guess would be my conclusion.
Then why not 3 hot washes?
I'm sure there are dishwashers that does 3 cycles, but afaik, most do 2.
> You focus on a very specific type of soil that Technology Connection didn't even mention, and isn't even relevant for a typical wash.
But that's a primary issue with TC's tests: it doesn't consider corner cases like this or water hardness. Consumers want it to "just work" and are not going to use a specific settings based on the contents of their dinner.
Sure, it helps the prewash remove fats. But if the main wash and the rinse aid get rid of all that regardless, then it doesn't really matter.
Does it matter if the pre-wash removes 40% of the fat and the main wash removes the last 60% or if instead the pre-wash removed 20% and the main wash removes the last 80%?
Yes, the pre-wash clears away the water from that cycle much faster than the main wash, so the cleaner the main wash water is in the beginning, the more effectively it can clean.
a bunch of orange containers/etc that I have beg to differ.
for removing fats and for actual washing there is a main cycle that runs hot
It's entirely possible that a cold pre-wash helps avoid staining! But that's not what I'm complaining about.
TC made specific claims about the benefits of a hot pre-wash. Instead of countering those, the blog's author decided to ignore them and build his own strawman to attack.
The author should have refuted the specific claims, or acknowledged them before moving to the drawbacks.
blog author actually discussed it. in form of explaining that hot prewash stains, 85% of cleaning done mechanically, the rest is done with detergent with temperature been supportive (according to published "scientific literature") and that who cares about how things are clean after prewash as long as dishes come out clean after main wash.
in general, it's hilarious. there are literally dozens R&D departments that design dishwashers across dozens of companies. And all of them are wrong because somebody run tests on (checking notes) 30 years old dishwasher.
i trashed dishwasher similar to the one that tests are run on 4 years ago. it was washing everything just fine with exception of few days when check valve broke. after i replaced it, it came back to washing perfectly with cascade platinum pods
> there is a main cycle that runs hot
This is why you pre-run the hot water in the tap (assuming the dishwasher is attached to the hot water tap/pipe), so the dishwasher has hot water for the pre-wash already. Works for us for a better overall cleaning.
Then why don't manufacturers recommend this? Why don't dishwashers in Europe (which have access to higher voltages) run the prewash hotter?
It's because, as outlined in the linked article, hot water makes the problem of staining plastic worse. So they try to mechanically remove it before the main wash. Note that in the original video, the main wash heat temperature wasn't impacted by preheating the prewash.
> Then why don't manufacturers recommend this?
They literally do! https://i.imgur.com/gCDuZZM.png
Rather than jumping into this whole thing in the middle, I'll ask you to begin from the beginning, catch up on what you missed on (the two earlier Technology Connections that were made before the submission article), so we can at least have the same base-level understanding of the situation first, then you can come back and we can argue the entire day.
I have a high end euro-style Bosch, largely seen as one of the best washers out there. No indication in the manual of running hot water. In fact the manual shows the temperatures that all the different cycles run at, and the "pre-rinse" cycle does not show a temperature. The manual also doesn't say to add any detergent other than the main cycle and recommends pacs. Its always at the top of industry testing, so I am thinking a random YouTuber might not be correct here.
They literally don't. it's not in my manual and not in manual cheapest LG and GE machines that are currently available for sale
This screenshot is seems to be from manual of Frigidaire FDB520RHB or something similar that was discontinued 12 years ago or so.
Some of the programs of this dishwasher will heat water as needed, and in addition there is a button "hot wash".
showing manual of 20 years old machine today as proof for how machine should be operated it's just like arguing with todays doctor using 300 years old medical books.
things changed.
i don't pre-run hot water in the tap. my dishwasher meant to run pre-wash with "whatever" water (and is quoted in article, having hot water in prewash can actually stain things) and it washes everything perfectly. in fact all dishwashers i ever had washed everything fine (as long as they didn't have physical malfunction).
if dishwasher manufacturer thought that prewash needs hot water, it would have heated it to appropriate temperature like it does when it needs to.
Ok, so lets see some independent testing then.
What a strange response. While I agree that Alec's test at Technology Connections has a lot of issues, so does this article. There's a lot in here that's right, but also a lot of nonsense, even self-contradictory nonsense.
> If it is not obvious yet, I love detergents. So it is with a heavy heart that I say that dishwasher detergents are, in general, massively overrated. Other aspects of cleaning dominate the role of detergents, particularly in softer water or when using a rinse aid. ... In most cases, however, detergent only plays a minor role [... long snip...] detergents do not make that much of a difference. ... it is extremely important to keep in mind that nothing detergent-related matters that much.
While it is true that there are many effective detergents on the market, there's a simple test that you can do to show yourself that detergent matters a lot. The absolute best detergent I know of available, at any price, is Tergajet. Tergajet is a laboratory detergent that happens to work in household dishwashers. Tergajet is expensive. Tergajet is powerful. Run your dishwasher just once with Tergajet and you'll be able to tell the difference. (The inside of my dishwasher practically sparkles.) Because it is so expensive, I only use it when I have something seriously nasty to deal with (usually when I've inconvenienced/committed minor atrocities against a skillet). It works. And that's prima facie evidence that detergent does matter: if you can see significantly different results by changing it, it's important!
There's almost no discussion of enzyme action and how it's affected by temperature -- this is really important! Enzymes hate heat. The proteases in Tergajet denature above 55°C, so they like to be just below that temperature, while everything else cleans better above that temperature. It is a delicate balancing act. This, incidentally, is what's been going on with Energy Star and detergents. Old dishwashers ran hot (very inefficiently) and cleaned well. Then we lowered the temperature, but didn't reformulate the detergents, and got poor results. Now enzyme-based detergents do a good job at lower temperatures, but need longer to work, as enzymes aren't terribly fast. This has major implications on what you want your pre-rinse to look like, if you're using detergent in it.
> This risk of “saturation” is almost non-existent. First, you only need a few grams of a good surfactant to strip a lot of oil. Second, the pre-rinse and/or pre-wash cycles, even without detergents, will still remove a lot of soil. Your dishwasher’s wash water will be hot enough to loosen oils, further diluting soils during regular cycles. And then your rinse aid will act as a fairly potent degreaser, finishing the (in all likelihood, already finished) job.
> For all practical purposes, to premium dishwasher detergents, a really dirty set of dishes and a moderately dirty set of dishes aren’t all that different, and so it doesn’t make a difference whether only 30% of the soil or a full 90% of the soil was removed during the pre-wash stage. The main wash stage will do just as good a job regardless.
This is absolutely, completely opposite to my results using dishwashers. You want the detergent to be present in excess: the limiting reagent has to be the soil for good results. I dump lots of Tergajet in there if I'm going to the trouble of using any at all. The final rinse cycle will get rid of whatever's left behind (because Tergajet is free-rinsing). Yeah, the pre-wash is great and needs to be powerful, but you cannot skimp on the soap.
Getting in to the detailed formula comparison, I'm struck by how he thinks EcoGeek/Green Llama has to be heavily caustic given that it contains multiple species of citrate pH adjuster. It's probably not all that alkaline. (I don't have any to check, myself. Does anyone know the pH? Tergajet is around 11 or so, which is pretty serious.) He also seems to think that corrosion inhibition is for "longer-lasting dishes and cutlery". Dishes and cutlery (porcelain and stainless) don't care about pH all that much. Corrosion inhibition is mostly about aluminum. If you never put aluminum things in your dishwasher, even by accident, you wouldn't really have to care much about this at all.
Two detergents have "Better performance on soils that benefit from oxidation because of the transitional metal bleach catalyst." ... but the other has TAED, a "bleach activator". Same thing! Yes, they'll have different effectivenesses, but it's disingenuous to say one detergent has this and the other doesn't.
Is any of this fatal to his arguments? No. But they're sloppily argued. I don't think either he or Alec have made solid cases here.
- my dishwasher runs energy star program on 60-70C for main wash cycle. takes ~3h. quick&intense takes 1h at 65c and has no pre-wash. same detergent is used. there is no difference in day to day usage from what i saw using same detergent (contains enzyms)
- more than once i either forgot caps in previous dishwashers that I used or run out of powder in dishwasher that i use now. only sometime i could see that there was no detergent due to tiny dried on piece of food on fork or something like this. rest is typically sparkling clean. my results pretty much corresponds with article quote "Mechanical energy of the machine itself is responsible for 85% of the soil removal during the cleaning cycle; the detergent contributes the other 15%"
Ignoring laboratory detergents like Tergajet, would you say that the choice detergent is still very significant?
It depends on a lot of factors. (The main one is actually your water hardness. Around here, the water is soft straight out of the tap, so that helps me a lot.)
I get the best results with Cascade Platinum paks, so I buy those. I have had inferior results with other detergents. (Kroger has a clone of the Platinum packs. I think it's pretty good as well, but I don't remember.) So I don't buy those any more, I buy the one that I know will work.
It is not a surprise that the paks work well. There are several ingredients that "like" to be formulated as powders, and several ingredients that "like" to be formulated as liquids. The paks can contain both. This is not possible for pure powders or gels, so that lets paks have more different cleaners in them. (I don't know what's going on with gels. I've never personally had good luck with gels.)
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