POV: you’re a college student who lives on her own. Not only do you have to do homework and go to class, but you also have to cook your own meals. While cleaning up after making your signature pasta dish (a spin-off of Gigi Hadid’s vodka pasta), you notice that your pan is really gross and grimy on the bottom. You scrub and scrub, but only a little if anything comes off. What can you do now? Enter: Bar Keepers Friend.
This cleaning agent comes in many different forms so that it can be used on many surfaces. Its creation is credited to a chemist named George William Hoffman who realized that cooking rhubarb cleaned up a tarnished pan of his. He ended up finding out the secret ingredient and sold a powdered version of it to his bar keeper friends to polish up any brass fixtures they may have. The secret ingredient? Lov– no it’s oxalic acid.
So when it comes to cleaning, there are different ways to do so: physically and chemically. As the description entails, physically cleaning something includes scrubbing, heat, light, and sound waves to clean a surface. With chemical cleaning, a reaction is used to remove dirt or anything from a surface. However, with chemical cleaning, some corrode surfaces more than others and are more toxic. Compared with other acids like hydrochloric acid and citric acid (which are both in-organic acids), oxalic acid is less corrosive. It can also complex with metal ions more effectively (aka can loosen up any built up schmutz and make it more dissolvable). But how does oxalic acid do that?
Let’s take rust for example. Rust (iron oxide) is oxidized iron and SUPER hard to get off of any pans or metallic surfaces. Don’t even get me started on how tough rust stains are on fabric and other woven stuff like rugs. When oxalic acid comes into contact with rust, it causes a double displacement reaction. What does that mean? The double displacement basically switches around the ions in the rust and oxalic acid, resulting in the rust to turn into iron oxalate. Iron oxalate is a salt that is water-soluble, allowing it to be washed away by water so TADAAA!!! We’ve cleaned our rusty pans and things.
Now, the brand, Bar Keepers Friend has expanded to more than just a powdered oxalic acid cleaner and takes many shapes and forms. You can use different products to clean stove tops, pans, and even your coffee machine. Of course, in order to be suitable for these places, they have to alter the formula. Their formula takes many forms, from liquids to powders to other liquids. For gentler surfaces, they’ve diluted the amount of oxalic acid. But at the end of the day, you could also just rub a piece of rhubarb on your pans and rust stains. After all, who said oxalic acid couldn’t be your friend too?
Resources:
Britannica, The Editors of Encyclopaedia. “oxalic acid”. Encyclopedia Britannica, 19 Dec. 2018, https://www.britannica.com/science/oxalic-acid. Accessed 20 November 2022.
He, Y. “Liquid-Based Microextraction Techniques for Environmental Analysis.” Comprehensive Sampling and Sample Preparation, Academic Press, 10 July 2012, https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/B9780123813732001162#s0095.
Li, Yong-Sheng, et al. “Cleaning Effects of Oxalic Acid under Ultrasound to the Used Reverse Osmosis Membranes with an Online Cleaning and Monitoring System.” Desalination, Elsevier, 16 Apr. 2016, https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0011916416301710.
“Our Story.” Bar Keepers Friend, 11 Feb. 2021, https://barkeepersfriend.com/about-us/our-story/?param1=value1¶m2=value2&keyword=barkeepers+friend&creative=595151622440&gclid=Cj0KCQiAveebBhD_ARIsAFaAvrGcdlz4IqwndBFsUDjLp0H5Hpi3VXFwBVovW5U7WUm76vXWCD3RraUaArjIEALw_wcB.
Renae. “Cleaning with Oxalic Acid? Here’s What You Need to Know.” CORECHEM Inc., 7 Sept. 2022, https://corecheminc.com/cleaning-with-oxalic-acid-heres-what-you-need-to-know/#:~:text=When%20Oxalic%20Acid%20comes%20in,water%20and%20easily%20rinses%20away.
