Statistical Method Makes A Comeback

Anyone who has washed dishes can tell you that a lot of stuff clings to dirty plates, glasses, and silverware after a meal. And anyone who has developed an automatic dishwasher detergent to clean the mess can tell you that a lot of chemicals need to come together to make it work. With all the variables involved, finding the right molecule to perform any one function in a detergent could involve hundreds of experimental test runs in the development lab. Or it could take 20. BASF recently used a statistical modeling method called design of experiments (DOE) to test its Trilon M chelating agent in phosphate-free detergent formulations. By establishing a means of manipulating multiple variables at one time—the effects of temperature and washing time on the interaction between chelating agents and surfactants, for example—the company was able to significantly reduce the number of tests needed to create effective detergents ...