Single component liquid trolley cleaners will work short term (up to one day), but when you set up a cleaning solution and expect it to function for days or weeks they do not work.
Single component trolley cleaners are typically caustic soda with a little chelation and/or surfactant in them. When these products are added to water and percolated in a hot tank they react with carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, neutralizing the alkalinity of the caustic and resulting in a rapid drop in cleaning performance.
Birko advocates the use of a two-component system for trolley cleaning. One component is the caustic soda solution; the second component is a strong alkaline buffering product that holds the active alkalinity in the tank at a constant level. This constant level of alkalinity is what is necessary for cleaning performance over multiple days or weeks of performance. The fact that the buffer also adds other cleaning properties (emulsification, peptization, dispersing, antiredeposition, etc.) to the system are just added enhancements. This is a far superior approach to cleaning trolleys versus the single component system.
