Altogether, the German printing industry emits approximately 100,000 tons of volatile organic compounds (VOC) per year. Goal of a Goal of a project of the company Schwegmann in cooperation with the research center Forschungszentrum Jülich is to replace conventional detergents with more nonpolluting micro emulsion cleaners. Micro emulsions unite the material qualities of water and oil and possess due to their reduced surface tension especially good surfactant and cleaning qualities. They contain significantly less solvents than conventional cleaners. At the present state-of-the-art, large quantities of tensides for the manufacturing of micro emulsions are required, that are reversely environmentally damaging and adversely for the work safety.

The method developed at the Forschungszentrum Jülich allows to clearly reduce the tenside volume with help of polymeric additives in micro emulsions. While tenside shares of 20-30 % were required for the manufacturing of micro emulsions until now, the tenside contents could be reduced to 8 % in the modern cleaners thanks to the new technology. This saves costs and reduces the environmental damages. The used tensides don‘t consist any longer of petroleum but largely of re-growing raw materials with a very low hazardous potential.