Green cleaner cuts grease, and costs
Woburn company's nontoxic solution is popular with hotels
Electrolyzer Corp. practices a modern version of alchemy. But instead of changing lead into gold, the Woburn company turns a mixture of salt and tap water into cleaning solutions tough enough to cut restaurant grease and leave hotel bathrooms sparkling.
As incredible as it seems, the stuff works. Electrolyzer's wall-mounted system, known as ElectroCide, is now producing nontoxic cleaners for fish processing plants, culinary schools, and hotels, including several in Boston. In addition to replacing hundreds of gallons of chemical products and saving thousands of dollars a year, hotel executives say the products keep their properties as clean as ever.
"Seeing is believing," said Matthew Moore, director of rooms at the Seaport Hotel in South Boston. "It's really been quite the thing."
Meanwhile, Electrolyzer, which began commercial production about two years ago, is catching a green wave in the hotel industry. Customers are increasingly demanding hotels follow environmentally sensitive practices, from energy-efficient lighting to recycling to composting food waste, and conventions are writing such requirements into hotel contracts, according to industry officials.
A recent survey by the American Hotel and Lodging Association, a Washington trade group, found that 88 percent of responding hotels have put green initiatives in place.
"This is one of the major trends," said Jessica Soklow, spokeswoman for the hotel and lodging association. "Consumers are more environmentally conscious in all parts of their life."
The Electrolyzer system, contained in metal casing, 16 inches high, 12 inches wide, and 6 inches deep, produces two types of cleaner: a sanitizer and a grease cutter. The process, similar to electrolysis, starts with water, piped into the container, where it mixes with table salt.
Low-voltage electricity charges the solution and breaks the salt into component parts, sodium and chloride, which are filtered into separate compartments with specialized membranes. Inside the compartments, chloride reacts with water to form hypochlorous acid, a disinfectant, while sodium combines with water to make sodium hydroxide, a grease cutter.
The solutions, produced at a cost of about one-half cent per gallon, flow into storage tanks, where cleaning crews fill bottles and buckets. Like water, the cleaners are colorless and odorless when sprayed. The taste, however, isn't so great, said Electrolyzer vice president Patrick Lucci after taking a swig.
"No one's recommending that you drink it," said Lucci, "but if you do, it's not going to hurt you."
At local hotels, executives say the Electrolyzer system has eliminated gloves, masks, and other protective clothing cleaning crews once needed to handle chemicals. The Electrolyzer solutions, carried in color-coded bottles - red for the disinfectant, blue for the grease cutter - replace several products, including window cleaners, all purpose cleaners, rug spotters, furniture cleaners, and floor cleaners.
At Boston's Colonnade Hotel, which installed an Electrolyzer system in its kitchen about 18 months ago and added another in housekeeping six months later, vice president and managing director David Colella estimates the hotel saves $1,200 a month in chemical purchases. An Electrolyzer system, including the storage tanks, costs about $10,000.
Since the solutions produce no smell or suds, the biggest challenge is convincing employees that the stuff works, hotel executives said. Dee Gonzalez, the Colonnade's executive housekeeper, admitted she was skeptical at first. "You think if it's not foaming, it's not working," she said.
It certainly works for Ada Perez, who recently whizzed through a room spritzing walls, windows, mirrors, furniture, chrome, and a wide-screen television with the clear solutions, and making them shine. Perez, a Colonnade housekeeper for the past 19 years, said she used to break out in rashes from chemical cleaners.
No more. "It's very, very good," she said.
Electrolyzer was founded about five years ago by Samuel B. Coco, former president of Boston chemical maker
The technology is decades old, but only in the last few years has it been commercialized by companies such as Electrolyzer and PuriCore plc of Malvern, Pa., which uses a slightly different technology, said Joellen Feirtag, a professor of food safety at the University of Minnesota. Electrolyzed water is as effective and often more effective than chemical cleaners and sanitizers, and safer for people and the environment.
"It's truly green," she said. "I think you're going to see this really take off."
Electrolyzer, which employs six and contracts with local firms for manufacturing, so far has installed its system in about 75 businesses and institutions, including the Army Soldier Systems Center in Natick, Cambridge School of Culinary Arts in Cambridge, and the Alabama Health and Human Services lab. The company is beginning to develop a household unit.
"This is a technology that seems to fit the needs of anyplace in the world that has to clean and sanitize," Coco said.
Hotels, with large housekeeping and kitchen operations, became an obvious market for Electrolyzer. In addition to the Colonnade and Seaport, Electrolyzer has installed systems at the Hyatt Regency in Chicago, the Royal Sonesta in Cambridge, and the Sheraton Boston, New England's biggest hotel.
The 1,200-room Sheraton installed an Electrolyzer system about two months ago as part of efforts to expand environmentally sensitive practices. So far, said general manager Mark Anderson, the system has meant safer conditions for workers and has done away with the need for specialized room cleanings for chemically sensitive guests.
Over the longer run, Anderson said, he expects the system to yield savings by reducing chemical purchases and to become part of the hotel's marketing as it promotes green practices.
"If the green ends up being cash," he said, "that's OK, too."
Robert Gavin can be reached at rgavin@globe.com. 