IDEA: self scrubbing cleaning solution

Hi,
without knowing the exact chemical components of food after cooking and burning into your put this idea is somewhat speculative. I gather that most cooked in stains are burned fat and/or sugar that bonded nicely with the metal. Compounded by the fact that metal shrinks when cooling this may well improve the bonding as the rough surface of the metal pinches the burned food like metal claws.

Nanotechnology has ideas of preventing material to stick in the first place by preventing bonding. This isn't much of use for the conventional cockware. One of the problems is to create an agent, chemical or otherwise, to dissolve the bond between metal and burned food. Presumably, this problem has already been solved by the major corporation that produce the cleaning agents. My guess is that the trick lies in delivering the agent where it counts.

Mechanically from the outside, due to the surface roughness I presume, there is not a chance for removal without an chemical agent by hand. It has to be an iterative process of dissolving some of the food, cracking more grooves into the burned food and further dissolving. A process we know and dread as scrubbing.

Using a cleaning agent which is either magnetic or electrostatic movable the agent could attempt to penetrate and underflow food. The cookware could be placed on a magnetic or electrostatic surface attracting the cleaning agent. A chosen agent might loose the magnetic or electrostatic attraction when chemically altered after dissolving the dirt. Therefore allowing fresh agent to pull through. Using the right field polarisation, the agent could be concentrated onto the dirty spots decreasing wastage of itself.

Another variation would be to change polarisation of the underlying surface in a fashion that will rotate the cleaning agent molecule and possibly increase its effectiveness due to the added mechanical boost.

An even further variation would be a dish washer equipped with magnetic or electrostatic walls allowing for the same mechanism in the washing machine.

A metallic magnetic paste without chemical properties may be used as cleaning agent and only relying on the mechanical movement for cleaning and polishing. However, this will have the drawback of gradually eroding the metal surface as well. Focussing the cleaning agent is therefore paramount.

Another .. and so forth...