How to Choose the Right Metal Degreaser Products: An Overview

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Metal can accumulate a considerable layer of grease on it surface in restaurant environments, the operation of vehicle engines, and grease traps for restaurants and other entities. However, when it comes to cleaning away accumulations grease on restaurant surfaces to make them more sanitary, degreasing engines to keep them in top condition, and cleaning waste traps so grease doesn’t accumulate on the sides, not just any type of metal degreaser will do.

Choosing Metal Degreaser Products

If you aren’t sure exactly what type of metal degreaser products you need for your metal degreasing operations, it’s important to consult the following, four-part checklist before you move forward and purchase a significant supply of industrial grade metal degreaser products.

  1. Type of Metal to be Degreased

When metal is heated to its “transformation point”, the microstructure of the metal takes on different characteristics than it possessed prior to the high-heat, degreasing process. For example, although carbon steel seldom breaks or cracks while being degreased in a parts washing system, if the system heats or cools too fast, the weakened dimensional stability of the metal workpiece due to internal stresses — which are the opposite of ductility — could result.

  1. Heat Sensitivity of Microstructure

As mentioned above, some metals perform better at unusually high temperatures than others. For example, the chemical compound chromium is highly corrosion resistant under normal conditions. However, unless chromium is fluxed or placed in an atmosphere-controlled furnace that eliminates oxygen, there’s a good chance chromium will corrode and ruin the piece that was supposed to have a shiny, stainless steel appearance on exiting the furnace.

  1. Type of Degreasing System Used

It’s also important to choose a degreaser based on the specs of your parts washing system that is used to degrease small and moderate size parts. In addition to pure compatibility, it’s ideal to choose vapor metal degreaser products that condense excess solvent in a solvent containment system (located in the machine), from which they can be taken, purified, and reused. Using this system has the potential to reduce solvent expense.

  1. Short-Term / Long-Term Safety

Here, we are talking about degreasers whose components are toxic to humans, and thus compel the EPA and other regulatory agencies to make them “reportable”. nPB (a.k.a. N-propyl bromide and 1-bromopropane) is a perfect example of this type of degreaser. Considering the acute and chronic negative health effects nPB can cause in human and animals, companies are largely moving to replace nPB with eco friendly degreasers that offer just as much power.

Need Help Degreasing Metal Products?

The word “metal” is a broad description of substances that have metallic qualities that result from the presence of real metal. Metal is a highly durable, attractive product when it’s properly maintained, such as when it is degreased on schedule. If your company or organization needs assistance selecting the right metal degreaser products for its needs, contact Ecolink today at (800) 563-1305, or use our contact form. We look forward to supporting your degreasing needs.

Metal Cleaning Products: How to Choose the Right Ones

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Metal cleaning products play a crucial role in a variety of work processes, from flux removal, to engine degreasing, to tank cleaning, to removing light accumulations from common metal surfaces. If your company or organization is in the market for metal cleaning products, it’s important to start the selection process by taking the four steps below, which will help you choose cleaners that are perfect for your work processes and safe for your workers to use.

  1. Identify Products Designed for the Application

How do you clean metal? There are various options, including vapor degreasing, hand wiping, spray and air dry, and power washing, just to name four. Because there is no use in purchasing metal cleaning products that aren’t designed for your cleaning applications, it makes the most sense to start by identifying products that are designed for your specific processes. After limiting your search to application-specific products, you can move to step 2 and focus on selecting products whose ingredients are non-corrosive for the types of metal you need to clean.

  1. Select Products With Non-Corrosive Ingredients

Some metal cleaning products are corrosive to some types of metals and not others. For example, cleaners that contain sodium hypochlorite have been shown to readily corrode aluminum and carbon steel, compromising their surface quality and fracture strength. However, this cleaning agent is typically considered compatible with 303 stainless steel. If you need help identifying non-corrosive cleaning agents for the type of metal you need to clean, don’t resort to informed guesswork. Contact the chemists at Ecolink for help selecting non-corrosive cleaners.

  1. Choose Cleaners That are not EPA Regulated

As efficacious as a metal cleaner may be for your cleaning needs, it won’t do you much good if you can’t use it in sufficient quantities to perform cleaning operations. This is what can happen when a cleaning solution contains ingredients that are listed in the Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) List of Hazardous Air Pollutants (HAPs). Chemicals on the list are generally not illegal to use, but their use in industrial facilities is regulated to the point that most companies simply can’t use enough of them to adequately support crucial metal cleaning operations.

  1. Consider Cost Factors for a Particular Cleaner

Last but certainly not least, consider how much it would cost to implement a particular cleaner. In addition to the cost of the product, consider how using it would impact waste disposal cost, whether using it would require you to outfit workers with a higher level of personal protective equipment (PPE), whether a special ventilation system would be needed for the work environment, and whether using the solution would put you at risk for violating emissions caps. If you are looking for a long-term solution, cost should always be a major consideration.

Contact Ecolink for Metal Cleaning Products
Metal cleaning products can be distinguished in several ways, such as whether they are designed for a particular cleaning operation, whether they contain ingredients that would corrode the metal you need to clean, whether they are EPA regulated, and the overall cost of using them. The product specialists at Ecolink can help you select metal cleaning products that account for these considerations and have the safety profile that you need for workers and the environment. Call us today at (800) 563-1305 for help selecting the right metal cleaners.

How to Shop Solvent Parts Washers Online

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Solvent parts washers, which are machines in which parts are placed to undergo a highly controlled, solvent-based cleaning process, play a crucial role in the cleaning operations of companies and organizations around the world. Industrial grade parts washers can last for decades, but there comes a time when even the most reliable parts washer must be replaced, which brings us to the subject of this entry: How to shop for solvent parts washers online.

Why Shop Online?
Solvent parts washers are like most other products: You find the greatest abundance of them online. Buying in store provides a face-to-face custom service experience that many buyers appreciate when they make a significant investment in a washer, but if you shop with an online seller of parts washers whose website has contact information for sales support and technical support, you should receive great service there, too.

We recommend shopping online. However, whether you decide to shop online or in store for new solvent parts washers, there are at least five considerations to make before you secure a purchase: solvent compatibility, solvent recycling, wattage requirements, buying from a vendor versus buying from a manufacturer, and training time required to learn the equipment.

  1. Solvent Compatibility

It’s much easier to implement a parts washer that can use your current parts washing solvents than to implement a washer that requires you to research and purchase a new line of industrial cleaners. As long as the solvents you use are doing the job and have a good safety profile, it makes the most sense to buy a washer that accommodates the solvents.

  1. Solvent Recycling

Some types of solvents, such as high boiling solvents, are good candidates for solvent recycling of the kind that separates the cleaning catalyst from used solvent so the former can be reused. Because the process is typically performed with a parts washer that exerts a vacuum on the cleaning chamber that pulls the catalyst into a condenser unit, be sure to choose a washer that operates in this capacity if solvent recycling is a part of your cleaning operations.

  1. Wattage Requirements

If the wattage of a new parts washer is greater than the wattage of the previous equipment, be sure that electricity conduction equipment that serves the washer’s operating environment (e.g., power inverters, frequency converters, power converters, etc.) can handle the additional electricity load. Otherwise, the equipment could experience premature wear and fail during service due to carrying a load that exceeds the equipment’s load size.

  1. Vendor Vs. Manufacturer

When it comes to receiving technical support, getting your parts washer straight from the manufacturer instead of a vendor offers an obvious advantage: The manufacturer knows its products better than anyone and can thus provide you with a higher level of pre-sale technical support that helps you choose the right model. Buying directly from the manufacturer can also save money, as it eliminates using a “middleman”, a vendor, to get what you need.

  1. Training Time

How long will it take workers to learn to use the new parts washer? For the sake of productivity, this question should be answered before you buy instead of after. The learning curve for using most solvent parts washers is rather small, but it does require workers to take a bit of downtime. If your company has daily production quotas, considering training time can be quite important.

Contact Ecolink
After you acquire your new parts washer, you’ll soon need to order more solvent to use with the equipment. If you need industrial solvents that are environmentally preferred, we recommend that you make Ecolink your solvent supplier. We supply stock and custom cleaners for a variety of cleaning needs, from the removal of light dirt to the removal of tough, organic accumulations.

To learn more about our eco friendly, industrial grade cleaning solutions, browse through our product list, or call us today at (800) 563-1305. We look forward to hearing from you.

Recycling High Boiling Solvents Through Boiling: An Overview

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High boiling solvents are solvents that have high boiling points compared to the boiling point of water, which ranges from 212°F to 168°F, depending on altitude. Solvents that have a high boiling point are excellent options for parts cleaning operations that require parts to be submerged in solvent and uniformly surrounded by the cleaner — a requirement that a solvent that is raised to a boil could compromise due to rising bubbles from the boiling action.

Recycling High Boiling Solvents
When they use high boiling solvents that have a high level of purity and cost more than most solvents that have a lower level of purity, organizations are often interested in recycling the solvents, when the option is available. When the option is on the table, one the most efficient means of removing the solvents from the tainted liquid that results from the cleaning operation is to boil the leftover liquid in order to make it condense, so it can be collected and reused.

At this point, however, the benefit of high boiling solvents for high-temperature immersion cleaning can become a drawback, as the solvents must be raised to an unusually high temperature into order to make them boil and condensate. This is why many organizations use a special system for boiling high-purity solvents to recycle them.

Using a Solvent Recycling System
Systems that are designed for recovering high-purity solvents facilitate solvent recovery by performing two primary actions: chamber boiling and applying a full vacuum to the chamber to draw vapor from the boiling action into a condenser, where it condensates. Because high boiling solvents are prone to condensate on various surfaces due to their low condensation point, the condenser maintains a much lower temperature than the boiling chamber.

To ensure that vapor from high boiling solvents doesn’t condense on the walls of the heating chamber, the pipe work that leads to the condenser, or the condenser’s rotor, a full vacuum is applied to the chamber to draw the vapor into the condenser. After high boiling solvents are vaporized in the heating chamber and condensate in the condenser, they can be recollected and reused for immersion cleaning and other cleaning operations.

Ideal Option for Big Solvent Users
Industrial grade systems for recycling high boiling solvents aren’t cheap. Consequently, organizations that use a high volume of high boiling solvents in a given period of time use the systems most frequently. However, considering the high cost of some high-purity solvents, implementing a system for recycling them can generate an excellent return on investment (ROI). In addition, recycling used solvent instead of sending it into a waste trap can help lower waste disposal costs.

Contact Ecolink Today
For more information about purchasing eco friendly solvents that have a high boiling point, call Ecolink today at (800) 563-1305, or refer to the contact form on our website. We look forward to answering your questions about recycling high boiling solvents and providing you with these solvents for your cleaning operations.

 

The Health Risks of 1-Bromopane and How to Avoid Them

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If 1-bromopane (a.k.a. NPB) were a person, it would be someone whose career started out on a high note due to his great effectiveness, but gradually descended into the gutter due to his increasingly obvious caustic qualities. To extend the analogy, using 1-bromopane as a cleaning solution is similar to hiring someone whose bad characteristics start to outweigh his good ones, especially when it comes to how they affect people in the work environment.

Is your company or organization still employing 1-bromopane as a go-to cleaning solution for industrial cleaning operations? If so, it’s time to give the toxic cleaning agent the boot before it has the chance to trouble your workers with the following health conditions, among others.

  1. Nervous System Damage

According to the U.S. Department of Labor, chronic exposure to NPB can lead to a myriad of nervous system problems, including: “difficulty walking, muscle twitching, and/or loss of feeling in arms and legs.” Employees that experience these conditions naturally have a higher rate of absenteeism and often initiate workers compensation claims.

  1. Profound Mental Confusion

The U.S. Department of Labor lists “confusion” as another malady that NPB exposure causes. Profound mental confusion is often a temporary effect of acute exposure to the cleaning agent, but confusion can seriously jeopardize the safety of workers while they are on the work floor. Imagine the risk of someone operating industrial machinery while feeling mentally confused.

  1. Slurred Speech

Speech slurring is another neurological malady that 1-bromopane causes and is a condition that often goes hand in hand with mental confusion. Good communication is an attribute of practically every successful work environment. One of the last things any company wants is for its workers to communicate as if they had one too many martinis at happy hour.

  1. Loss of Consciousness

In cases of severe, acute exposure to NPB, loss of consciousness can occur — a situation that is often preceded by the person experiencing dizziness. Like mental confusion, loss of consciousness is a major safety risk when it happens in the work environment. Even when no equipment is involved, loss of consciousness can lead to falls that cause head injuries.

  1. Development of Cancer

According to the National Toxicology Program, 1-bromopane is “reasonably anticipated to be a human carcinogen.” This observation is primarily based on studies that show the development of cancer in animals exposed to NPB vapor. Cancerous conditions resulting from NPB exposure may take a long time to develop, but when they do, personal injury lawsuits are often the result.

Need a 1-Bromopane Replacement?
The best way to avoid the health risks of 1-bromopane is to replace the cleaning agent with one that has a better safety profile. Although high-level personal protective equipment (PPE) and special ventilation systems that trap airborne contaminants can help reduce the risks, taking these measures can be far more expensive than implementing a 1-bromopane replacement.

For assistance identifying a NPB replacement that is safe to use and delivers the same cleaning power, call us today at (800) 563-1305, to speak with one of our product specialists. We will help you find a safer, powerful cleaner to replace NPB for your cleaning operations!