[Public-List] Has anyone tried MAS Bio-Solv

[Don Campbell]

    Corn starch is a wonderful source for carbon to make new carbon 
compounds and it depends upon the work organic and biochemists wants to 
put into the breakdown of corn starch to derive end products. It is 
quite possible to make acetone (a 3 carbon chain)  from corn starch with 
an enzymatic destruction of glucose (6 carbon ring)  into two 3 carbon 
units and then derive acetone from that. Great advertizing though if it 
gets Californians thinking bio- friendly.
    Generally any good degreaser for surface preparation has two parts 
to it , usually on the same molecule and at opposite ends : one part 
hydrophyllic and one part lipophyllic, The hydrophyllic end is water (or 
solvent soluble ) and the the other end is fat soluble. In this fashion 
the one end captures the fat or grease and the other end is captured by 
the solvent and so effectively taken away by excess amounts of solvent. 
Soap is a case in point. The potasium or phospate on the one end is 
water soluble and the fat on the other end captures the grease. Water is 
the solvent that takes the molecules away from the surface you want 
clean. (Soap is a  product from natural animal fats with 16, 17 or 18 
carbon atoms and  detergents are similar in action but from man made 
carbon chains of 34, 35 or 36 carbon atoms. Bio-friendly usually means 
that there is some bacteria, fungus or other organism that will ingest 
or attack the base and use it as an energy source with an ensuing enzyme 
reaction to break it down. to be effective, teh necessary bacteria must 
be in the vicinity of the product that requires breaking down! So if you 
do not have the specific life form nearby, there is not much gain and 
most water treatment facilities do not use any biosystems within the 
current facilities.  As well, the bacteria may not like the compound 
once it has extra adhering to one end! We might  say it tastes bad, but 
they may say they cannot manage the size or get to the bond they like to 
break.
       You need to figure out what the actual chemical is and what it 
becomes with whatever you are trying to clean up attached to it to sort 
out whether it  is bio-friendly or not. And then you need to know if the 
bacteria or life form is available. The fact they make the product  from 
corn starch instead of petroleum is just a matter of language not 
particularly bio sources.
    The real crunch is that petroleum based carbon compounds were also 
once plant material and so just as "bio-based" as any plant based 
chemicals now. The only change is that the petroleum sourced carbon is 
being taken out of long term storage and corn starch is taken out of a 
short term storage. The sad part  is that chemists have made things like 
benzene rings from naturally occurring 6 carbon rings with no concept of 
anything but construction,  and unfortunately benzene rings and many 
other organic chemical compounds are neither bio-destructible nor easily 
destructible by other man made systems.  (The use of this term 
"organic"  for most chemists means only that they are compounds that 
contain carbon. As an aside, this is one of the real problems of 
language with "organic" food products)
    You will find that acetone (or any other liquid that evaporates very 
quickly) works better if you use about a 25:75 % water to acetone 
miscible solution . Acetone will not do much of a job on particulate 
matter (aluminum oxide from abrasives for instance)  because the acetone 
evaporates so fast and leaves the particles where water will tend to 
adhere to particles and using the adhesive and cohesive  forces from 
the  water molecule will remove the particles on your cloth as well as 
the greases with the acetone.
    The other fact is that only plants can fix carbon from CO2. Any 
carbon based product we (and any other life form)  make in our bodies we 
need to do so from ingested carbon compounds and subsequent biochemical 
breakdowns.
While this does not answer your question specifically, it might help 
with some background information so that you can decide what you really 
want to know.
Don
#528

Rick Leach wrote:
> Hello All,
>  
> I just got an advert from Jamestown Distributors for a product called "MAS 
> Bio-Solv" that claims to be a bio-friendly, corn-based solvent that outperforms 
> acetone, toulene & xylene for cleaning and surface prep for paint and epoxy.  It 
> sounds worth a try, but I'm wondering if anyone here has given a whirl yet.  
> Experiences?  Opinions?  Anyone?  Thanks!
>  
> Rick Leach
> Sugar Magnolia, #121
> Monterey, California
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