The Chemistry Behind Dry Cleaning

“[Dry cleaning] cleans all sorts of....fabrics...in such a manner that nobody would ever think they had been wetted...it neither changes nor alters color, but it takes the dirt, oil, and grease out of silks, cotton, and wool assisted by labor.”

History And an Overview

In “Dry Cleaning, Part 1. The Process and History: From Starch to Finish,” author Eugene Garfield noted the early history of dry cleaning. It has been studied that the Mycenaean civilization, which was in existence from 1600 - 1100 B.C., employed a basic dry cleaning process. An Oxford Classicist by the name of C.M. Bowra had demonstrated that the profession known as “dry cleaner” could be found in the clay tablets of the civilization. (Garfield, 218) Thus, Garfield says, this early Greek civilization may have used grease-absorbent materials as solvents to remove dirt from garments. Now, to this day, dry cleaning is done with solvents that are not necessarily “dry” in the sense that one usually understands it, as in “a dry desert,” but rather, solvents are dry in that they do not need water to be effective. In other words, these solvents used today are non-aqueous.

In Drycleaning: Technology and Theory, authors Martin and Fulton define dry cleaning as “the cleansing of textiles in an organic solvent.” (Martin and Fulton, 1) The authors note that the process birthed in the middle of the 19th century in Paris, France, when camphene, an oil used for lamps, was spilled onto a gown accidentally. Consequently, the gown seemed cleaner. Now, the fact that the process originated in France gives rise to the process being referred to as “French cleaning. Other sources, however, describe the legend differently. Jean-Baptiste Jolly was the Frenchman who accidentally discovered, in the mid-19th century, that camphene made a garment cleaner. And it was not a gown that the oil was spilled on; he actually spilled the oil onto a table cloth. Perhaps the origin of dry cleaning is legend after all, because it seems that no one source can agree to the exact details of what happened. It makes one wonder how many inventions were the result of accident and not careful planning!

Now, Garfield continued