ARCHIVES

Moving on from my previous post about safe washing, the next natural step in the detailing process is decontamination, which is a somewhat narrower topic but one that is often misunderstood. Prior to discussing decontamination with Rich I had an understanding of what decontamination does and how to do it, but didn’t know how it actually works…

To be honest, I was a little worried about being blinded by science when Rich started talking about organic and inorganic particles, electrolysis, charges and so on; he’s got a PHD in hydrochemistry whereas I scraped my way to a Standard Grade in Chemistry! However, I needn’t have worried as the basic principles are just that – basic.

After washing your car, there is every chance that the paint will still be contaminated with particles which can’t be removed by shampoo alone and these fall into two categories: organic (carbon-based and generally more ‘natural’ like honeydew and pollen) and inorganic (sometimes still carbon-based but in a highly processed form, or everything else that doesn’t fall into the organic category).

Every now and again the car care rulebook is torn up and rewritten by innovative new technologies that come along and redefine what we can expect from car care and detailing products. Currently, we are in the midst of such a period of change, this time brought about by the application of nanotechnology to surface coating science. At the most basic level, nanotechnology can be defined as the engineering of functional systems at the molecular scale. In relation to car care, nanotechnology can be used to make advanced protective coatings that do not just adhere to vehicle surfaces, but rather become part of the surfaces themselves. As a result, surface properties of interest and importance (such as etching resistance, scratch resistance, hydrophobicity, etc) can be altered on a semi-permanent basis; we are now moving into an era when car care coatings will truly last years rather than months.