Captain's Log

How Febreze Works

You can get a not-so-specific description at Febreze's website. I did a little searching and found out more details on how Febreze works. It has a little bit of fragrance, but if you've used it you can tell that's not a very strong. It hides odor by trapping odor causing things onto the clothing.

Everything you smell is either a gas, vapor, or suspended particle. If something has a piece of clothing has an odor, then it has a high concentration of the odor compound or particle adsorbed on the fibers. Since there is a lower concentration of the compound in the surrounding air, the compound slowly evaporates or detaches from the clothing, and diffuses into the air. That's what you smell. When you spray Febreze on a piece of clothing, a large sugar-based molecule traps the odor causing compounds and prevents them from entering the air. Since it's stuck to the clothing you can't smell it, even though it's still there. You aren't really removing the odor until you wash the odor (and Febreze) away with water. So think about that next time you have Febrezed a piece of clothing several times to get around washing.

For the chemically-inclined: The active compounds are cyclodextrins. They are cyclic glucose oligomers made up of 6, 7, or 8 glucose molecules. They are pretty good at complexing a wide range of organics, and are used to complex pharmaceuticals for better delivery in the body. I found a short chemical description (bottom of the page), and a drawing of the structure if you are curious.

Also cyclodextrins are the active ingredient in Downy Wrinkle Releaser. P&G is making a nice sum off the patents for these uses.

For the sake of referencing my original sources: I originally learned most of this stuff from a page on an automated clothes freshener, and this ACS article told me a little about the chemistry.