Citrus vs PavePro: The STRONGEST Asphalt Remover Showdown

Whether you’re cleaning your asphalt equipment up at the end of the shift or the end of the season, it’s exhausting, tedious, and annoying. Using the right asphalt remover to loosen up the asphalt is important to make the process quicker and easier. Historically, people resort to what they know works: diesel fuel and citrus. But would you be surprised to know that there is a solution far better, more powerful, safer, and less expensive?

Read Here: Diesel vs PavePro: The Ultimate Asphalt Release Agent Showdown

Why Citrus Cleaners Are So Popular

There are hundreds, if not thousands, of citrus cleaners, degreasers, and removers on the market. At the end of the day, all that is in a citrus cleaner is by-product waste from food processing plants, scent, dye, and water… oh, and a bunch of other chemicals that aren’t “safe and natural” like they are marketed to be.

We posted an article a few weeks back about the various carcinogens and toxic chemicals found in the most common citrus asphalt cleaners, according to the citrus companies’s published SDSs: 2-butoxyethanol, aminopropyl diethanolamine, and tert-butyl-4-methoxyphenol just to name a few. If you don’t believe the danger of these compounds, do a quick Google search for them and see for yourself.

I kid you not, we’ve had a customer switch to our products after they’ve had employees go blind after getting a citrus product in their eyes. We took a look at the product’s SDS and were able to pinpoint exactly where the problem in the product was. 

Now don’t get me wrong, citrus cleaners do clean well. However, when you compare the power, safety, and cost to a product like PavePro, you won’t ever go back to the orange-smelling stuff ever again. Let me break it down for you.

Citrus Ain’t All It Cracks Up To Be

As I mentioned earlier, citrus cleaners are based on a waste by-product from food processing facilities that gets added with water and some other “juiced up” chemicals (the toxic ones) to make it a powerful cleaner. But because it’s a by-product, the manufacturers have very little control over the formula. Their formulas aren’t targeted for specific purposes, they just make a degreaser. They also don’t have very much control over the safety mechanisms in their cleaners either. That’s why they are so flammable, toxic, and have such a low flash point.

Flash point is directly tied to performance. When you’re working with hot mix, the flash point of your asphalt solvent or release agent is everything. If the flash point is below the temperature of the hot mix, it will evaporate significantly faster than it does at an ambient air temperature. For a product like citrus, with a flash point of 115°F, we’re talking immediate evaporation. That’s why there aren’t any good citrus release agents out there.

Tired of your good-for-nothing asphalt solvent or release agent and ready to make a switch?

PavePro Is A Better Asphalt Remover Than Citrus

You know that song that goes like, “anything you can do, I can do better”? That pretty well summarizes PavePro and citrus products. I mean seriously, PavePro is leaps and bounds better than a citrus cleaner.

For starters, PavePro is a patented product manufactured exclusively by our team. What this means for you is that our products are not a by-product that just so happens to work to clean asphalt, but rather a carefully engineered and formulated blend of active ingredients, each with a specific purpose. It also means that we have different products used for different reasons. Because we can target certain materials with our formulation, PavePro Green, Gold, and Blue all work and function differently, instead of a one-size-fits-all model. That way, we can ensure our products target bitumen specifically, and don’t eat up rubber and paint quickly like citrus does, or stain and dull polished aluminum.

I mentioned earlier the importance of flash points in your asphalt solvent and cleaners, and I just want to highlight the importance one more time as we talk about PavePro as a release agent. Flash point is one of the main reasons that PavePro is so effective. PavePro Green boasts 3-4x as many loads in your truck bed to prevent asphalt build-up and anywhere between 50-100 shovel loads before you notice build-up. That’s unheard of and, to many of our potential customers, hard to believe. But we pride ourselves on the fact that PavePro Green is the longest-lasting asphalt release agent on the market.

As an asphalt remover, PavePro is unmatched. Citrus pales in comparison to the effectiveness of PavePro. For starters, PavePro is the safest asphalt remover on the market. Unlike citrus, PavePro is 100% deactivated by water. You can spill it on a fresh mat and hit it with some water and not have to worry about milling that area up and repaving it. In addition to being water deactivated, PavePro is pH neutral, non-caustic, and non-toxic so it is safe on paint, rubber, and aluminum.

Take a look at this comparison chart, and if it changes your mind about how you should be cleaning your asphalt equipment and you want to try a powerful asphalt solvent like PavePro, hit us up.