Dewaxing agent is a chemical compound designed to remove wax and other contaminants from surfaces.dewaxing agent It is a highly efficient, environmentally-friendly, and water-based alternative to solvents like acetone and IPA. It is non-toxic, free of ozone-depleting compounds, and it does not corrode metals or substrates. It also has the advantage of being highly soluble in water and possesses good penetrating capabilities, high wetting performance, and strongdewaxing ability.
The removal of wax from lubricating oil is necessary to achieve low viscosity at lower ambient temperatures, and can be achieved by a number of processes.dewaxing agent These can be either physical (extraction) or by different selective chemical reactions (catalyticdewaxing). The main objective of these processes is to separate linear alkanes (i.e. paraffins) from the crude oil feedstock, as they have a detrimental effect on the fluidity of the finished lubricant.
There are two main types ofdewaxing: selective hydrocracking and solventdewaxing.dewaxing agent The former uses a shape-selective zeolite catalyst to crack long paraffin chains into shorter chains, rejecting the ring compounds and isoparaffins. The latter involves mixing the oil feedstock with a solvent to reduce its viscosity, chilling it until the wax components crystallize and then filtering to remove the wax.
Solvent dewaxing is the most common method.dewaxing agent In this process the feedstock is mixed with a solvent to lower its viscosity, chilled until the wax components precipitate and then filtered to recover the dewaxed oil and solvent for recycling by flash distillation and steam stripping. Typical solvents used include propane and mixtures of methyl ethyl ketone (MEK) with methyl isobutyl ketone or MEK with toluene.
Another way to dewax is by microbial dewaxing. The microbialdewaxing process enhances heavy oil recovery through two mechanisms: by increasing the solubility of hydrophobic substances and by degrading complex compositions (Wu et al, 2022). Specifically, bacteria produce biosurfactants that prevent wax crystals from aggregating and allow them to be easily transported by oil flow.
Microbialdewaxing can also be performed using a microwave system. The dewaxing agent is a highly soluble aliphatic hydrocarbons based xylene substitute used for the deparaffinization and clearing of preparations in professional manual and automated immunohistochemical staining. It is miscible with alcohol and can be used with sections from tissue fixed in formalin or glyoxal and embedded in paraffin. The reagent is free of irritation and hypersensitivity and is easy to use. It is also an excellent intermediate between alcohol and section mounting medium. This makes it an ideal choice for both manual and immunohistochemical staining of cell-based cytology smears. It also has the advantage of being less hazardous than xylene. This is a significant advantage over the current xylene-based paraffin dewaxing method and its many toxic byproducts. Microbial dewaxing is also cost-effective as it eliminates the need for costly solvents. As a result, it is the preferred dewaxing method for human tissue samples. Similarly, it is the preferred method for animal models.