I have to admit that I was a bit ignorant about exactly what the solvents used in dry cleaning are. There are actually a number of them and they range from liquid CO2 under pressure to silicone-based solvents to hydrocarbon blends to ethers and esters. Some of them can indeed be flammable, but generally these would not be used straight and they are not generally the sort of things which ignite easily.

In the past, however, gasoline was used as a drycleaning agent. The reason would be that petroleum products like gasoline would tend to be better at dissolving certain things, such as grease or oil stains than water and would have favorable characteristics with certain fabric. I would have to think it was some extra-refined or distilled gasoline, as standard gasoline leaves quite a smell on fabric, even after it mostly evaporates. (I know this from experience). Or it may just be that at one time gasoline was based on lighter hydrocarbons which tended to evaporate better.

In any case… here’s a movie I found online explaining why you should not try to replicate the wash process at home with a can of gas. Seems like good advice.

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This entry was posted on Tuesday, November 27th, 2007 at 5:48 pm and is filed under Education, History, media. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

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