Foam sells in hand dish.
Foam kills in a dishwasher.
Auto-dish tabs sit right between chemistry, machine design and user nose. You need strong cleaning, low suds, stable hardware, and a clean scent that doesn’t hang on the glass all night. Not easy.
Let’s walk through how low-foam surfactants, blooming perfume and encapsulated fragrance really work in automatic dishwashing detergent tablets, and where a supplier like I’Scent can take some pain off your lab and purchasing team.
Inside the machine, cleaning comes from:
Big foam blankets just get in the way. They:
That’s why automatic dishwashing detergent tablets rely on low-foaming nonionic surfactants plus builders and a very small dose of defoamer. Classic high-foam hand dish systems would be a nightmare here.
A common tablet “window” in the industry looks roughly like this:
| Component block | Typical range in auto-dish tabs (wt%) | Role in low-foam system |
|---|---|---|
| Builders and alkali (carbonates, citrates, etc.) | 40–80 | Water softening, pH control, soil suspension |
| Bleach system | 2–10 raw material content | Stain removal, hygiene, base odour |
| Enzymes (protease, amylase, lipase) | 0.5–5 | Protein, starch and fat breakdown |
| Low-foaming nonionic surfactants | 0.3–8 | Wetting, grease removal, controlled foam |
| Suds suppressor / defoamer | 0.001–3 | Cuts peak foam under heavy soil |
| Polymers / additives | 1–10 | Anti-spotting, anti-filming, crystal control |
| Fragrance (free and/or encapsulated) | 0.1–2 | Wash scent signal and door-opening impression |
Perfume oil takes only a tiny share of the formulation, but it defines most of the perceived “quality” of the tab. That’s why formulating low-foam fragrance solutions is less about brute force dosage and more about smart structure.
Auto-dish bases are not friendly to perfume:
At the same time, the end-user wants very simple things:
So your perfume system has to:
This is where blooming perfume and starch-encapsulated fragrance become very useful tools.
Blooming perfume is just perfume that loves to jump into the air when hot water hits it. In automatic dishwashing detergent tablets, blooming systems are tuned around a few ideas:
A good blooming structure for auto-dish tabs usually:
When you brief blooming perfume for this category, talk in dishwasher language, not just olfactive words:
You’re basically asking for a short, sharp, clean spike, not a long trail like a fine fragrance.
Now the second big tool: starch-encapsulated fragrance.
Here the perfume sits inside solid micro-capsules built on modified starch or similar carriers. In your powder or tablet, it behaves more like a builder particle than a liquid oil.
It brings three clear benefits:
In real life, many brands run a hybrid system in auto-dish tabs:
That combo is especially helpful in phosphate-free and “green” bases, which tend to show more base odour.
On the surfactant side, auto-dish tabs usually use a two-layer foam control strategy.
Typical systems mix:
More and more players like plant-origin nonionic surfactants here, to support label claims and marketing stories. For fragrance oil this matters, because plant-based bases often carry a slightly different background odour you need to hide.
Then you have the pure defoamer layer:
When you add perfume, you should always run:
It sounds basic, but skipping this step is how you end up with that angry review saying “foam everywhere and dishes still dirty”.
Let’s put this into real project language. Below is a quick problem table you can use inside your R&D team.
| Issue in market or QC | Typical root cause | Technical fix direction |
|---|---|---|
| Foam spike in mid-wash | Perfume uses surfactant-like solvents or raw materials | Rebuild base with low-foam carriers, re-tune defoamer, re-test |
| “No smell” feedback from users | Perfume not designed for blooming in closed machine | Shift to blooming structure, adjust note balance and dosage |
| Glass smells strange the next day | Heavy base notes and oxidation sticking to surface | Softer base, add malodor control, more bloom, less sticky bottom |
| Eco tab smells “chemical” not “clean” | New builder system has strong own odour | Custom mask tuned for that exact base, not copy-paste from old tab |
| Storage odour drift in warm warehouse | Perfume breakdown in high-pH, bleach environment | Move part of perfume into starch-encapsulated fragrance |
Every line here links to a mix of perfume design + low-foam engineering, not just “increase fragrance level”. That’s real formulation talk.
To turn these ideas into stable products, you need a supplier who can speak both perfumery and detergent chemistry.
I’Scent is positioned as an
OEM/ODM Fragrance Oil & Perfume Raw Materials Manufacturer.
Since 2005, the company has been serving personal care, home care, air care, hotel supplies, cleaning brands and many more sectors worldwide.
Some points that matter if you work on automatic dishwashing detergent tablets:
For auto-dish work, you’ll normally fish inside:
There is also a targeted item like
Dishwashing Liquid Citrus Burst Home Care Fragrance Oil.
It was created for hand dish liquids, but the olfactive logic – bright kitchen citrus with a neat dry-down – is a good reference when you brief auto-dish options with stricter low-foam targets.
If you need a fully private accord, the
Perfume Oil OEM/ODM Customized service lets you lock in your own formula, owned by your brand, tailored to your base and market.
A real-world project with I’Scent for auto-dish tabs might move like this (not super fancy, just effective):
If any step is unclear, your team can always talk directly through the contacts on
About Us or
Contact Us.
The idea is to keep the workflow simple, but still very technical where it matters.
You may notice my English is not 100% textbook perfect here, but the process is what counts.
All this low-foam and blooming talk is not just lab fun. It has real business impact:
In the end, a good low-foam fragrance system turns your auto-dish tab from “just another cleaning cube” into a repeatable, trustworthy experience every time the door closes.
Get the foam under control. Let the scent do the talking. And if you want a partner that can handle both sides, I’Scent is ready to build that system with you.
