Vapor Degreaser - Trichloroethylene alternatives

[fcuneo]

Hi everyone,

I'm currently looking for alternative degreasing technologies for our current TCE vapor degreaser. We are currently using this equipment to clean aero-engine parts (magnesium, stainless steel and aluminum) from light oils (machining cooling oils and fluorescent penetrant dyes used for DPI) as our prep prior plasma spray deposition.

I was wondering if anyone has gone through this path already and might be able to point me towards the right direction.

From what I've seen so far it's either a choice of sticking to the chlorinated solvents (which some might be phased out as well in the next 5-10yrs) or going towards a aqueous cleaning systems (that may or may not be able to effectively clean the parts).We are hoping we can go for the aqueous cleaning systems any inputs?

Cheers,
F.

 

[btrueblood]

Another technology uses supercritical CO2 (carbon dioxide), at least I know it is being used for dry-cleaning of clothes, and thought it had been developed for part cleaning also. A bit of google time should help you see if somebody has a commercial system for sale.

see this article -

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supercritical_carbon_dioxide

 

[zdas04]

I just did a feasibility study on a CO2 sequestrtation project and found that super critical CO2 is the super solvent of the future. When I looked at compressing it, I found that it is such a good cleaner that it will clean the lubricating oil from a recip compressor cylinder. Really the only drawback I found to using this stuff as a solvent is that it has to be above 87.8F and 1070 psia--you may not want your basic dry cleaner to be messing with that much pressure, but in an industrial application the folks should be trainable.

David

 

[dcasto]

here is a different one I witnessed at a pilot plant that was cool!!! Propane! Its a take off of dewaxing lube oils as published and use regualy, put has beed adapted to remove oils from seeds on oil from ROCKS, like tar sands.

 

[unclesyd]

Here is two possible replacements Vertrel and Bromothane. Both maybe drop in replacements. We use the Vertrel material in our vapor cleaners where we did use a Freon.
We have also tried to limit the vpor cleaning of componets by the use of hot alkaline ultrasonic baths.

http://www2.dupont.com/Vertrel/en_US/vapor_degreasing_methodology.html

http://www.bromothane.com/FAQs/FAQ.Q20_Applications.html

 

[fcuneo]

Thanks you very much for all the inputs