Original Story: http://www.mlive.com/business/west-michigan/index.ssf/2009/08/grand_rapids_business_hits_it.html

Grand Rapids Business Hits it Big Making Product Required

to Seize 'Cash for Clunkers' Engines

Ron Balk, president of Cleaning Solutions Inc. and Scoot Products in Grand Rapids, stands beside barrels of sodium silicate at his facility.   Balk saw a demand for this chemical boom from two barrels a year to more than 20 barrels just in the last week of July because sodium silicate know as "liquid glass" is required to seize engines on all those clunkers coming in for trade-in.            Photos by Paul L. Newby II | The Grand Rapids Press

GRAND RAPIDS &mdash Ron Balk's company, Cleaning Solutions Inc., specializes in soaps and pest repellents based on environmentally safe chemicals. But a big boom hit in late July — for sodium silicate, the agent of death for clunkers.

After one auto dealer inquired about the liquid glass product, an employee told Balk: "This is going to be big!"

Balk didn't buy it, until his company at 1250 Ramona St. SE ran a few small ads on Google.

The product we had in our ad was gone within 15 minutes, Balk said. Now, he is a primary source of the engine-seizing fluid for auto dealers in West Michigan and beyond, because every Cash for Clunkers trade-in must be completely disabled.

Once dealers make the sale and get paid for the customer's $3,500 to $4,500 rebate, service workers must drain the oil from the clunker, pour in two quarts of liquid glass then run the engine until it seizes. The clunker goes to the scrap yard to be recycled into sheet metal.

"Under normal circumstances, we go through a drum or two drums a year," Balk said.    Sodium silicate typically is used in liquid soaps and gels, or to seal concrete or clean drains -- all in small quantities.    In the week that Cash for Clunkers launched, July 24-30, demand grew tenfold.

"For us to go to 20 or 25 drums of material in a week's time, it definitely spun the head of our distributor," Balk said. His employees fill jugs by hand, because he does not want to run the solution through his automated equipment.

Despite the demand, Balk said he is not laying in a big supply of liquid glass.

"If the program stops dead, I don't want to be stuck with more than a year's supply," he said.

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