Carnauba wax flakes
1) Since Carnauba is mostly grown in north-eastern Brazil along the wet regions, most of it is imported to distributors by the same source. Because of that, for a 50Lb bag, your price is generally around $8. We all seem to have the same cost basis. If you buy a smaller quantity the price will go up and a larger quantity the price will go down, but a ballpark is $8/Lb for a 50Lb bag.
2.) Since all Carnauba #1 Yellow grade is the same, this doesn’t have any relation to cheap or expensive coffee. Carnauba is carnauba. While there are different grades, all auto waxes that I know of are made from Carnauba #1.
3.) Bleaching. I should have clarified this a little more. Bleaching yellow carnauba to be white provides zero added benefits other than changing the colour from yellow to white. The process of bleaching can be tumbling raw flakes with colour reducing agents, or, as simple as using Clorox. The major point about "White #1" is that it's just yellow #1 with a colour change, with no added benefits.
4.) Carnauba does produce a little shine and a little gloss. It's minimal enough where if you don’t include some additives in the wax to aid in gloss, levelling, shine, colour and depth, then your wax will not look so good. The reason being is we apply such a thin coat of it to the vehicles surface, in food manufacturing the density is much greater. The process of making a jelly bean shine is part of adding the carnauba and then tumbling it, which is essentially a jelly bean buffing machine. Quite neat, it was on Food TV last week. If Carnauba was so good and a wonder wax, then all you would need to do is add solvent and package it. Since this isn’t the case, that's why we have so many types of wax that work in so many wonderful ways.
5.) The toilet reference was a bad attempt at humour. Still, carnauba does not stain a white vehicle yellow.
6.) 95(C) is the temperature in which I personally melt wax. 82-83(C) is the standard melting point, however when melting such a large quantity of wax in a large cooking vessel, 95(C) ensures that there aren’t bits and crumbs of the flakes that have not melted. You can cook carnauba at anywhere between 82-299(C), but over 95(C) you risk the additives flashing as most of the additives makers use will have a flash point of around 98(C).
7.) Zaino's reference to the state of carnauba is a pretty generalized statement, I don’t agree with it. If Carnauba was so poor optically and hazy, we would use synthetic wax instead of carnauba wax
8.) Facts or Opinions? What I state is fact with my opinions. What I say is not false, it is not marketing, and it is nothing more than pure scientific fact. This is also my job. It's what I do professionally. As far as references go, pretty much everything I've said is available on the Internet already. It's just not in an easy to read neither format nor all in one place (until this post). To satisfy the critics, here a partial list of references:
Ester - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Carnauba wax - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Carnauba Wax
Essential Oils Supplier Guide and Directory
Chemical Manufacturing - Auto Appearance Chemicals - Formulations - Dow Corning
CHEMCENTRAL:Customer Tools
waxes
K-Solv Products
ExxonMobil Chemical
Hort 403 - Reading - Oils
2.) Since all Carnauba #1 Yellow grade is the same, this doesn’t have any relation to cheap or expensive coffee. Carnauba is carnauba. While there are different grades, all auto waxes that I know of are made from Carnauba #1.
3.) Bleaching. I should have clarified this a little more. Bleaching yellow carnauba to be white provides zero added benefits other than changing the colour from yellow to white. The process of bleaching can be tumbling raw flakes with colour reducing agents, or, as simple as using Clorox. The major point about "White #1" is that it's just yellow #1 with a colour change, with no added benefits.
4.) Carnauba does produce a little shine and a little gloss. It's minimal enough where if you don’t include some additives in the wax to aid in gloss, levelling, shine, colour and depth, then your wax will not look so good. The reason being is we apply such a thin coat of it to the vehicles surface, in food manufacturing the density is much greater. The process of making a jelly bean shine is part of adding the carnauba and then tumbling it, which is essentially a jelly bean buffing machine. Quite neat, it was on Food TV last week. If Carnauba was so good and a wonder wax, then all you would need to do is add solvent and package it. Since this isn’t the case, that's why we have so many types of wax that work in so many wonderful ways.
5.) The toilet reference was a bad attempt at humour. Still, carnauba does not stain a white vehicle yellow.
6.) 95(C) is the temperature in which I personally melt wax. 82-83(C) is the standard melting point, however when melting such a large quantity of wax in a large cooking vessel, 95(C) ensures that there aren’t bits and crumbs of the flakes that have not melted. You can cook carnauba at anywhere between 82-299(C), but over 95(C) you risk the additives flashing as most of the additives makers use will have a flash point of around 98(C).
7.) Zaino's reference to the state of carnauba is a pretty generalized statement, I don’t agree with it. If Carnauba was so poor optically and hazy, we would use synthetic wax instead of carnauba wax
8.) Facts or Opinions? What I state is fact with my opinions. What I say is not false, it is not marketing, and it is nothing more than pure scientific fact. This is also my job. It's what I do professionally. As far as references go, pretty much everything I've said is available on the Internet already. It's just not in an easy to read neither format nor all in one place (until this post). To satisfy the critics, here a partial list of references:
Ester - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Carnauba wax - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Carnauba Wax
Essential Oils Supplier Guide and Directory
Chemical Manufacturing - Auto Appearance Chemicals - Formulations - Dow Corning
CHEMCENTRAL:Customer Tools
waxes
K-Solv Products
ExxonMobil Chemical
Hort 403 - Reading - Oils
The maximum carnauba content would be 55% in my opinion. And even then, I've personally found it to be incredibly difficult to work with. I still strongly feel that most carnaubas advertised with 50% or "more" in carnauba content are truly advertising a weight, not a volume. 30% by volume is about 50% by weight. That's why you never can truly assess the amount of carnauba in a manufactured wax unless the manufacturer specifically lists their percentage in weight or volume.
THE ULTIMATE MYTH (And write this one down): The % of carnauba content in wax, no matter how it is disclosed, only matters to the amount of wax you will actually use per application. It has no bearing whatsoever on the quality of neither the wax, nor the finish it will produce. More carnauba just means you get more bang for your buck per tin of wax. However, the pitfall for consumers is that since you apply less wax you have a chance to miss spots on the vehicle than if you were using more products per application.
One thing that is very important to remember is that *all* Carnauba is refined. Carnauba literally grows on trees. The tree leaves are cut between September and February from two areas of Brazil. Once the leaves are cut down, the wax is removed in powder form from the leaves by a machine literally shaking and beating the leaf until the wax is free. The wax is on the exterior of the "leaf". Once the wax is beaten from the leaf, you can imagine all of the garbage on the powdered wax itself. Once the powdered wax leaves Brazil, it is then shipped to the USA for refinement. The refinement removes all of the dirt, bugs, debris, etc., from the powdered wax and makes it into a flake or powder format. The refinement is necessary to qualify wax for food grading and necessary to truly make "Yellow #1".
The initial colours of carnauba are brown to yellow, the colour depending only on the age of the leaf it was cut from. The colouring is a natural process that isn’t done by man or additives. Since the age of the leaf determines the colour of the wax, this is how it is sorted before exportation. Refining the wax does not change its colour whatsoever. The colour as already mentioned is pre-determined by the leaf's age. The only way to change the waxes colour is by bleaching it, or using additives such as paraffin (a naturally white wax). The big question we all have right now, is what happens to qualify wax as "White #1", does "White #1" exist, and does this involve a synthetic refinement or a simple colour change.
A few companies claim that it's ultra refined carnauba that is made synthetically. I don’t know what this mean. Others claim its part of a bleaching system where the colour is changed, or paraffin wax is added to aid in the colour change. I apologize in advance that it's Friday at 5pm EST when the wax importer is closed as I post this, but this is the reason I won’t have more actual hard data for you until Monday. Once I have a manufacturers data sheet in hand for #1 White Carnauba and its properties I think we can uncover more.
I've had discussions with numerous individuals over the last few days regarding "white" carnauba now and have what I consider to be the final answer on the subject. My sources for the information are Strahl & Pitsch, wax importers to the USA since 1904. Since they have over 100 years of experience with carnauba and supply most major wax manufacturers, I consider them *the* source of accurate information.
Bottom line: White carnauba does not exist, however natural and synthetic carnauba can be modified/made to look whiter.
As discussed earlier, carnauba grades are by colour of the wax, and the colour of the wax is determined by the age of the leaf from the tree. The older the tree gets the more oxidized the carnauba on the leaf gets and the darker and uglier the carnauba gets. The colour comes from the regular oxidation and natural anti-oxidants such as beta carotene that are present in the leaves.
The youngest leaf you can cut is around one year old when it actually produces wax. Farming "baby leaves" is not possible. The baby leaves have no carnauba on them and the very first amounts of carnauba a baby leaf will have is already yellow in colour. It is never possible to get "white" carnauba off of a baby leaf.
White carnauba *is* produced by using quantities of bleach. This is not refining. There is no refinement possible to change the colour. This process provides nothing good and nothing bad. However, this is not the only source of producing "white" carnauba. The other source is by using synthetic carnauba. Synthetic carnauba is carnauba that is close to the white-ish colour. Since alcohol gives carnauba its hardness (naturally), if you use an alcohol from a synthetic source, you have a synthetic carnauba. Is a synthetic white better than a natural yellow? There is no answer to this. Surely it has pros and cons when compared to a natural carnauba.
Adding paraffin wax to carnauba to lighten the colour is something that is possible but not commonly done as it degrades the quality of the end product. However, this is one way to produce "whiter" colored carnauba.
There are no data sheets to post since white carnauba isn’t sold and isn’t a product. Any sceptics may wish to call SP directly if they so choose, or find actual quantifiable data otherwise to the contrary and post it here.
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