Can Baking Soda Replace a Well Built Detergent?

Q: We have a large scale cannabis lab and facility.  Our manager ran out of Alcojet for our washer and replaced with baking soda.  I tried to use pH to prove this was bad idea but it wasn’t that drastic a difference.  What am I missing?

A: Using pH as a means to detect residue is a very gross method.  True (pharmaceutical style) verifications of cleanliness are done via conductivity (non specific) or HPLC (specific method).  There are of course numerous other well defined, precise quantitative means of residue detection. You can always discuss this with us or consider reviewing our whitepapers or handbook on the subject.

Regarding the baking soda itself, it is a mild alkali and will clean some kinds of residues.  It uses a single mechanism of cleaning because it is a single ingredient.  So even a strong alkali like NaOH or KOH is still limited.  But a detergent will essentially always clean better, with multiple mechanisms of cleaning including (in Alcojet powder’s case): emulsification, chelation, some hydrolysis, sequestration and anti-redeposition.  Now for very light residues, this difference may not always be noted, but cannabis residues which are a complex of phenolic compounds, oils, resins, terpenes and much more, certainly are not a light residue. 

Further, our detergents are lot controlled, FDA regulated, and routinely used in regulated pharmaceutical and food & beverage applications (and of course cannabis) around the globe. 

Baking soda just doesn’t stack up to that 🙂

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