Quaternary Ammonium Test Quat Test Strips: 200 Strips Quaternary Test Strips - Testing range 0-500ppm for Food Service...

I got these for my sons science project. He used them to test that certain cleaners have the chemical that these test for and in what amounts. It was easy to dip the test sticks into the solution and read the color each strip turned. They did work best if they were moved directly to a paper towel and not moved after dipping. They seem to give good results that he was able to make into a chart and report. He was happy with how well they worked.

I tried these test strips with filtered water, potassium olivate diluted in water (diluted Castile soap), and a popular brand of eye wash that has a preservative in it, benzalkonium chloride, which is a quaternary ammonium compound (quat). The other ingredients in the eye wash are water, boric acid, sodium borate (otherwise called borax) and sodium chloride (otherwise called table salt). None of these other ingredients foam by themselves. (Ive read that borax foams when heated; dont know how accurate that is, but borax is a softening agent that Ive never observed before to foam; this was a cold test.) I took an expired bottle of the eye wash and squeezed the entire contents into a clean glasssee photo to see just how much foam this produced. The foaming of the quaternary ammonium, also known as a detergent, that this eye wash contains is significant. Note that a softening agent, borax, would increase the foaming of a detergent. I tested the potassium olivate because it is also a surfactant (soap) that foams, to see if the test strips could tell the difference between soap and quats. The test strips correctly identified the filtered water and Castile soap as containing zero quaternary ammonium compounds. I tried the test twice on each. When the result is zero, the color on the test strip that tells you the amount is quite clear and unambiguous. So far, so good. The test strips correctly identified the eye wash as containing a quaternary ammonium compound. I tried the test three times, once after waiting several minutes. The positive test result showed that the amount of quaternary ammonium was between 100ppm and 200ppm. It was difficult to differentiate. 100ppm equates to 0.01%. Since the box states that the concentration of benzalkonium chloride is 0.01%, this means the test strips are not only accurate for showing the presence of quats, they also accurately determined the concentration (with a little latitude for the fact that over about 100ppm, the gradations are not that easy to distinguish because the colors are closer together). These test strips are accurate, very, very simple to use, with clear, simple instructions on the box. These test strips are mostly of interest for industrial and restaurant uses, to ensure that the concentration of quats that ends up in food and consumer products remains low enough for safety. But consumers could use these, too, to also ensure that their personal care and food products dont contain unintentional quat contamination, which might be helpful if they have allergies to benzalkoniium chloride. I was impressed by the accuracy and ease of use of these test strips.