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Don’t Passover Our Antifoams

Many types of foods and ingredients foam during the production process. If foaming is permitted, it can alter the product’s appearance, manufacturing time, quality or performance. Food-grade antifoams and defoamers are used to prevent, control, remove or mitigate foam to ensure high-quality, consistent production.

Not only do these antifoams have to meet food safety regulations to ensure they’re safe for consumption, but they must also be certified kosher if they’re going to be used in kosher food products. This is especially important for Passover-certified products.

Meeting Kosher Requirements in Chemical Manufacturing

Some Jewish people follow precise Biblical laws regarding what they eat. These kosher guidelines are applied to the food itself, the materials and other food items that make contact with the food, and how the food is processed or prepared. There are three categories of kosher food:

• Dairy: Dairy products must come from a kosher animal, be processed on kosher equipment, and include only kosher ingredients. It cannot be consumed with meat products or produced on equipment that processes meat.
• Meat: Only meat from kosher animals (those that chew their cuds and have split hooves, such as cows, sheep, and goats, as well as certain domesticated fowl) can be eaten, as long as they are slaughtered and prepared in a kosher environment according to kosher guidelines. It cannot be consumed with dairy or processed on the same equipment.
• Pareve: These are neutral foods, like fruit and vegetables, fish, eggs, coffee, and more, that can be eaten with meat or dairy. Pareve foods cannot be processed on equipment that also processes meat or dairy, or it is no longer pareve. If it makes contact with dairy, for example, it would be classified as such, and you would not be able to eat that item with meat.

Food-grade defoamers, antifoams, and treated silicas are usually considered pareve, which allows them to be included in kosher food products.

Why Kosher?

Even though only a small percentage of Jewish people in the United States follow kosher laws, it is a top label claim from a consumer standpoint. Even people who don’t follow Jewish dietary practices trust and like to see the kosher label, which is why more than 40% of packaged foods in the country are certified kosher. Many food producers benefit from using kosher materials and ingredients, and manufacturers that serve all aspects of the food industry—including packaging, additives, and more—strive to become kosher certified to meet consumer demand.

Passover-Certified Antifoams

Passover, the eight-day Jewish holiday honoring liberation from subjugation in Ancient Egypt, comes with specific dietary requirements that go beyond regular kosher guidelines. For those eight days, leavened products and any food made with spelt, oats, barley, wheat, and rye cannot be consumed—and that includes emulsifiers and additives derived from these grains.

At AMS, we offer Passover-certified food-grade antifoams. In concert with stringent rabbinical supervision, AMS manufactures kosher products that can be consumed during Passover and throughout the rest of the year. These include:

• TRANS-10PK: a water-based 10% silicone antifoam
• TRANS-100PK: a non-aqueous 100% active silicone antifoam compound

AMS manufactures silicone, non-silicone, and powdered food-grade antifoams and defoamers for use in fermentation, grain processing, fruit and vegetable washing, beverage manufacture, and more. Our kosher- and Passover-certified products meet the strict requirements mandated by Jewish dietary law, and we’re proud to offer these antifoams to our customers.

Contact us to learn more about how our food-grade antifoams can be a solution to your foaming problem.

Benefits of Hydrophobic Silica

Hydrophobic silicas are a unique class of materials with a wide variety of functional attributes and beneficial properties making it ideal for numerous applications ranging from adhesives, greases, and sealants to personal care and processing aid products. At Applied Material Solutions, we offer high-quality fumed and precipitated hydrophobic silicas to provide superior performance for your products.

Benefits of Hydrophobic Silica

 Hydrophobic silica has several different benefits that make it a crucial ingredient in many different compounds across diverse industries. These benefits include:

• Adsorbent. Hydrophobic silica adsorbs solid, liquid, and gaseous materials to easily convert liquids and pastes into powder. This allows for easier handling and dosing.
• Anti-Blocking. Its anti-blocking properties prevent film sheets from sticking together due to static or other interactions.
• Anti-Sagging. Hydrophobic silica increases sag resistance, making it especially useful for paints and coatings as it prevents them from drooping or running while wet.
• Anti-Setoff. Hydrophobic silica prevents setoff, or the accidental transfer of ink between printed pages. It can be used to create anti-setoff sprays and powders.
• Anti-Setting. It can be used in chemicals to slow pigment or paint dry times, especially on metallic surfaces. This is a key additive in paints and coatings, especially for use on larger or more complex projects that require more time for application.
• Free Flow of Powders. Hydrophobic silica acts as an anti-caking material to prevent powders from caking or hardening. It controls the moisture to keep each particle separate and defined for free-flowing distribution or use.
• Foam Control. Hydrophobic silica can be used as an active ingredient in defoamers, which reduce or minimize foam, making it ideal for adhesives, paints, food applications, and more.
• Hydrophobicity Control. Hydrophobic silica naturally repels water and forces it to form droplets. Adding this material to compounds allows manufacturers to enhance hydrophobicity control in a product.
• Mechanical and Optical Properties Improvements. Adding hydrophobic silica can improve the clarity, transparency, durability, and other attributes of materials.
• Reinforcement. Hydrophobic silica reinforces the elastomeric properties of certain materials. It can increase the material’s tensile strength, resistance to tearing, and stabilization in the face of temperature changes.
• Pigment Stabilization and Dispersion. Adding hydrophobic silica to pigments can make the liquid material more stable and easier to disperse evenly. This allows for a more reliable application of complex pigments.
• Print Definition. Hydrophobic silica can reduce runoff, smudging, and other errors that reduce print definition and clarity. Inks with hydrophobic silica additives are clearer, crisper, and more precise.
• Processability Improvements. Carefully adding quantities of hydrophobic silica to pigments, inks, sealants, and personal care products allows for more precise application and better processing.
• Rheology Control. Hydrophobic silica can control the suspension of particles in water-based materials to ensure product consistency throughout the batch or container.
• Thickening. It can thicken pigments, sealants, adhesives, and other products to prevent running and poor application control.
• Thixotropy. Hydrophobic silica makes thick compounds thinner when they’re shaken, stirred, or otherwise disturbed. This temporary fluidity allows for easier mixing and preparation.
• Suspension and Stability Behavior. Hydrophobic silica can stabilize complex fluid products and consistently suspend a mix of ingredients throughout the batch.

Choose Applied Material Solutions for Hydrophobic Silica

At Applied Material Solutions, our top-quality fumed and precipitated hydrophobic silicas offer reinforcement and enhanced performance for products across a diverse range of industries. Our state-of-the-art treated silica production facility allows us to produce large volumes and reduce delivery times for our customers. To learn more about the properties and applications of hydrophobic silica, check out our product page today.