Clorox ① - Not Eau de Parfum, but Eau de Javel

What is Clorox?

Chlorine (Cl) is highly reactive, so it usually exists in nature in the form of a compound combined with salt, and salt (sodium chloride; NaCl) is a representative example. Chlorine is a yellow-green gas at room temperature, and chlorine is derived from the Greek word chloros, meaning yellow-green. Around 1630, Helmont discovered that chlorine is a gas, and in 1774, Scheele synthesized and characterized chlorine. He initially thought that he synthesized an oxide obtained from hydrochloric acid (at that time, muriatic acid) and called it depholgisticated muriatic acid air (dephosphorized muriatic acid gas; at that time, gas was called air).

Salar de Uyuni in Bolivia, the world's largest salt lake. Salt is the most common chlorine compound found in nature.

In 1785, French chemist Berthollet realized that cotton or linen spread on a lawn turned white because it was oxidized by oxygen in the air, and he wanted to reproduce this artificially. He discovered that a liquid made by passing chlorine gas through a sodium carbonate (Na2CO3) solution had a bleaching effect, and this was a weak sodium hypochiorite (NaOCl) solution.

In the early days, bleaching was done by spreading cotton and linen products on lawns, which took a long time.

However, this liquid contained only a small amount of sodium hypochlorite, so the bleaching action was not very efficient, and in 1787, the Javel Company in Paris produced a potassium hypochlorite solution, a more powerful chlorine bleach, using potassium hypochlorite instead of sodium carbonate, based on Berthollet's experiments. The product was named liqueur de Javel after the name of the area where it was produced, but it later became better known as Eau de Javel (meaning Javel water). This was the first commercial bleach.

Eau de Javel, the first bleach

In 1820, Labarraque discovered the bactericidal and deodorizing effects of hypochlorite. Instead of potassium in Javel water, he used cheap sodium carbonate to make a sodium hypochlorite solution, which he called Eau de Labarraque and used for disinfection. Labarraque's solution was widely used for bleaching, sterilizing, and deodorizing purposes in hospitals, homes, toilets, sewers, markets, slaughterhouses, morgues, and livestock farms throughout the 19th century, and is still used today.

Labarraque's solution used for sterilization

In 1913, the Electro-Alkaline Company in the United States launched a liquid bleach made by converting chlorine in seawater into sodium hypochlorite using an electrolytic process. Since sodium hypochlorite is very unstable as an anhydrous solid and can explode, it is sold only as an aqueous solution, and at first it was a 21% concentration aqueous solution. Later, as the demand for bleach at home increased, a product with a lower concentration of 5.25% was made for household use, and it became popular because of its low price. This product is Clorox®.

Clorox was first sold in amber glass bottles, which were used until the early 1960s.

In 1975, Yuhan Corporation made a joint venture with Clorox to create Yuhan Clorox, and Clorox was launched and sold in Korea.

Yuhan Clorox in korea