Filtering the Electrocleaning Tank?

A. Hi Robert. Yes, it can be beneficial to plating quality, but is probably more typically to save cleanout labor. Yes, a few shops do it, but the overwhelming majority do not. The major filter manufacturers can offer case studies though (I've seen them).

More typically, the tanks have a grease trap to try to float standing oil off of them, or polypropylene grease gathering belts; but solids usually just sink to the bottom and the tank is periodically cleaned out. Good luck.

A. We just put in a brand new Nickel plating line that cost our company 1 million dollars. Our electrocleaner is 850 gallons. We also do this with our soak cleaner (using a filtration system on both of them that is). Anyway ... we use just your basic Penguin filter, that uses four 20-inch filter tubes. I don't know the size of the filter itself and how many times it turns the tank over, but I could get it for you. Now we have this vendor that comes into our shop, and he asked us to try these new filter tubes (brand new on the market, we were actually one of the first to try them). They are specifically made to draw oil out of the tanks. Now much to our amazement, they worked excellently, and it also is extending our tank life. We usually dump it every three months, now we are only doing it every six -- so this saved us money on chemicals. I would say we change the four filters approximately once a month. This product works great!

A. I certainly am not an expert in metal cleaning, but I have learned some things working in this industry for several years. If you aren't already doing this, it would be helpful to titrate for ratio of free to total alkalinity in your electrocleaner along with total cleaner strength. This ratio changes as your cleaner ages (contamination level increases) even if you keep total cleaner conc. constant. You should be able to get this technique and information about relating results to cleaning performance from handbooks or your electrocleaner supplier. Other general ideas which you probably are aware of include using a soak cleaner before electrocleaning, skimming free oils from the solution surface. Hope this helps.

A. Hi Mary Ma. We appended your inquiry to a thread which discusses the proposition. Continuous filtration of the electrocleaning bath is very rarely required for quality purposes, but it may extend the life of the cleaning solution and reduce the cost of labor and lost production in dumping and cleaning out the tank.

Most soak clean and electroclean tanks are equipped with grease skimmer/grease trap arrangements. This consists of a separate overflow compartment with a pump which returns the solution to a perforated pipe which skims floating grease into the trap.

Regards,

Ted, thank you so much for your attention. Yeah, now I've got it! We are using rinsing tanks with a running flow that is same as your schematic plan. I will consider continuous filtration for degreasing tank! ;)