Expert: Mike Fulcher - 10/5/2006

Question
I am in the commercial cleaning business, carpets,janitorial etc. One problem in our industry is foam created in our wet vacs, carpet machines, or any other piece of suction equipment. The only solution is to purchase a commercial defoaming agent. This is very costly,in the neighborhood of 25 to 30 dollars a gallon. I keep having this feeling that what I'm purchasing is probably available at walmart if I only knew what to buy. My question is what breaks down the suds and foam.

Thanks

Richard

Answer
Richard

The only thing I can think of at Wal-Mart that could be used as a defoamer would be cooking oil (any old kind), but I'm not so sure that would be a good idea for cleaning applications.  A common industrial defoamer is tributyl phosphate, which is described in the link:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tributylphosphate

Mixed 50/50 with isopropyl alcohol this will defoam anything.  We get ours from Univar in Dallas, but I can't tell you how much it costs because it's not in the system.  Good luck.