Soil Ballast Systems

wfk – Testgewebe GmbH is the leading producer and supplier of soil ballast systems for performance testing of laundry detergents / laundry systems. We manufacture the standard products listed below as well as custom made systems tailored to your project needs. For more information please contact us.

Background

For a first introduction into the issue of relevance of soil in evaluating laundry cleaning performance you may wish to have a look at the report of a workshop held at the Wageningen University (NL) in 2004. Click here to view or download (pdf, 280 kB). Please note that a lot more experience and data have been gathered since then, and today wfk SBL 2004 is an essential part of any reasonable laundry detergent testing using clean ballast loads.

	Soil Ballast specified in standards
	The A.I.S.E. "Minimum protocol for comparative detergent performance testing" calls for wfk SBL 2004.
	The "EU Ecolabel Performance Test for Laundry Detergents" calls for wfk SBL 2004.
	ASTM Standard D4265-14 ("Standard Guide for Evaluating Stain Removal Performance in Home Laundering") does not specify any specific soil ballast (yet). However, clause 8.6 Fabric Load states: "Natural or artificially soiled ballast may add realism to the testing conditions, but a high level of testing variability may be introduced unless this factor is rigorously standardized."
	wfk Ballast Soil Systems for laundry testing
wfk SBL 2004	Soil Ballast 'wfk SBL 2004' Order code: 10996 wfk SBL 2004 is the 'standard' Soil Ballast used for testing laundry processes. The soil composition of wfk SBL 2004 is more complex than that of SBL classic. With that we managed to drive the soil ballast impact on stain removal closer to 'reality' (as established in bundle tests). More info: wfk SBL 2004
SBL classic	Soil Ballast 'SBL Classic' Not offered anymore, former order code: 10999 This was the first soil ballast system developed by wfk. The concept was based on the results of a wfk research project in the late 1980ies. Today we consider it technically outdated and do not produce it anymore. We suggest to use wfk SBL 2004 instead.