The perfect water temperature

[Mike Draper]

If you could run your water at any temperature as high of flow as you want, what would it be?

 

[Guest]

I like 240-250, and i can ,and i do.

Cheers, AL

 

[Bill Soukoreff]

I can run 280F with my Savage heater, but I find with the insulating properties of Parflex and the Greenhorn with those jets so close to the fiber, 230F is fine. My standard hose length is 125 ft and the wand tube gets VERY hot. On a really oily olefin I will turn it up a little.

 

[Dolly Llama]

we run a fuel fired burner, so we have the ability to run at "spit and hissssssss" temps when needed

however, day in and day out we generally run in the 200-220 range.
About 10% of the time we'll cook along at 240+

A steady diet of 240 and up cooks wand valve seals prematurely.
Hoses won't last as long either


.L.T.A.

 

[B&BGaryC]

What about putting your cleaning solution in a beaker with a thermometer, heating the solution on a Bunsen burner until the solution becomes cloudy. Record the temperature at which the solution becomes cloudy and use that temp as your set point? I never really thought I had enough control over my temperature ATW or ATF or even ATM with the wild temperature extremes we get here in Montana to ever bother figuring out the cloud point of my cleaning solutions... But if I could get whatever temp I wished to have consistently, I would test the cloud point of my various cleaning solutions and set the truck to that.

 

[TimP]

Isn't the cloud point listed on the MSDS sheets......

 

[AshleyMckendree]

What about putting your cleaning solution in a beaker with a thermometer, heating the solution on a Bunsen burner until the solution becomes cloudy. Record the temperature at which the solution becomes cloudy and use that temp as your set point? I never really thought I had enough control over my temperature ATW or ATF or even ATM with the wild temperature extremes we get here in Montana to ever bother figuring out the cloud point of my cleaning solutions... But if I could get whatever temp I wished to have consistently, I would test the cloud point of my various cleaning solutions and set the truck to that.

Is the cloud point, where the chems work there best or is it when they stop working at all?

 

[steve g]

I would run about 240 ATM, anymore than that is a waste

 

[Greenie]

Bill touched on an important point. Preserving heat transfer is a lot cheaper than making heat, so try and preserve what you can. 200 is good, 220 is sweet, 240 is ripping grease off in layers, 260 is costing you twice as much in valves and hoses each month...lol

 

[Brian R]

All I know is my hand gets hot...with a glove on...from the vac tube on my wand. It even has a rubber sleeve on it.
the specs say 230 degrees for my TM. I think I am getting all of that. Can you really trust the gages?

 

[Greenie]

Some gauges were created more equal than others.

 

[Shawn Forsythe]

The "cloud point" is the specific temperature at which the surfactants fall out of solution, and no longer provide function.

If you want the surfactants to provide for emulsification, then the solution must remain below this temperature.

Ideally, your solution would never exceed the cloud point, to maintain adequate dispersion of the elements of the cleaning agent. But absolutely never above the cloud point when the solution is being applied.

I've never seen the cloud point listed on an MSDS sheet for a formulated product. You will have to ask the supplier to indicate the desired cleaning temperature, if not on the product label..

 

[bob vawter]

Shawn sez:

"emulsification"

what's that mean? in English....

 

[Shawn Forsythe]

Bob, It basically means this....

Emulsification is the process of taking two substances, that are normally not able to combined in a stable manner, and causing them to be blended in a stable form.

The easiest example is oil and water. These two substances will not coexist in a stable homogeneous mixture, nor will one dissolve or be dissolved by the other.

By using a surfactant in either the water, or the oil, the two substances can be "bridged" together in a manner of speaking.

The surfactant is composed of molecules with an oil loving end, and a water loving end. For detergent cleaning applications, the surfactant used is such that it can be completely dissolved in water, being used as a solvent. When the cleaning agent is contacted with the substrate to be cleaned of an oily soil, the surfactant is able to physically arrange the molecules into stable structures within the solvent (water), called micelles, that surround and suspend tiny droplets of the oil within the water, forming a stable mixture called an emulsion. The surfactant and water is said to have "emulsified" the oil.

Above the cloud point of the surfactant, the surfactant is not only no longer dissolved in the water, but it is also incapable of creating micelles, thus no emulsification can occur. The surfactant itself is as plain oil, and will separate or settle out in the water.

 

[TimP]

I've never seen the cloud point listed on an MSDS sheet for a formulated product. You will have to ask the supplier to indicate the desired cleaning temperature, if not on the product label..

That's what I get for not checking to make sure....they have lists of all kinds of points so I was just guessing.

What is the cloud point of point blue if you know right off and say compared to heat wave from prochem which is supposed to have a high cloud point???


You would think they would put information on packages that would pertain to what a cleaner needs to know about the product.

 

[B&BGaryC]

BridgePoint's White Lightning is their high heat product. Not Point Blue. Point Blue will cook in your solution lines if you run high heat. White Lightning will not.

 

[Shawn Forsythe]

That's what I get for not checking to make sure....they have lists of all kinds of points so I was just guessing.

What is the cloud point of point blue if you know right off and say compared to heat wave from prochem which is supposed to have a high cloud point???

You would think they would put information on packages that would pertain to what a cleaner needs to know about the product.

Tim,

You bring up the most important point. That being, what are the real world consequences of the cloud point issue. Generalizing, the cloud point of a surfactant is of actual greatest importance when cleaning with a portable machine, versus a truck mount. I'll explain.

First. actual emulsification is occurring during the dwell time the cleaning solution is on the substrate being cleaned, the fiber. Regardless of the temperature of the cleaning agent in the TM, or in the solution lines, the cleaning solution quickly loses heat the moment it hits the fiber. Within 3/4 of a second, the solution temperature on the fiber is well below 140 degrees f. Almost no cleaning agents we use have a cloud point below this 140 degrees. In fact most average around 140-160 degrees. Any settling out that might possibly occur is in the highly agitated state of the pump system or in the solution lines, which is also quite physically agitated. In fact, the solution stays very well mixed with surfactant, even though we are above the cloud point. It should be understood that the changes that occur above the cloud point are not irreversible. As soon as the solution drops below the cloud point, as long as the solution is well dispersed with surfactant, emulsification is free to take place.

In a portable machine, you have a static solution tank, where the mixed chemicals would have potential for the cloud point to become an issue. If the solution tank's mixed chemical is above the cloud point of the mixed surfactants, the settling out that might occur could lead to a problematic distribution of the surfactants in the solution tank. Here, you would definitely want a chemical compound that is specified for the potential elevated temperatures.

So called "high heat" products are usually those with complex surfactant blends that have surfactants with various cloud point, each working at their separate peaks as a solution cools on the fiber.

There are essentially two points of high focus, when dealing with cleaning temperatures. First, is the temperature at which oils and greases melt. Second is the peak temperature at which a surfactant emulsifies (right below the cloud point). However, what cannot be said in these statements is the relationship of the effectiveness of a particular surfactant. Just because two competing or different surfactants may have an equal cloud point, it does not follow they have equal or similar emulsification reactivity or HLB values.

Why don't products list cloud point? Because it is not as much of an issue as simply having a manufacture use surfactants with a cloud point of greater than 140, which they do anyway. And if you see your portable solution go cloudy when you heat it to YOUR desired temperature, then you may want to consider asking, "what IS the temp range of this product?" for portable use.

It is my opinion that the use of "high heat", when describing a product is more having to do with the ability of the product's other components in the presence of heat, rather than the just the cloud point(s) of the surfactant(s). But I am sure that enterprising marketing will indeed use the moniker if the product's surfactant does have a rather high cloud point, in which case the surfactant should only be used in elevated temp settings to gain all the advantage of the product.

 

[TimP]

So you're saying if the solution temperature comes back down everything is on the up and up again????

 

[Shawn Forsythe]

From the moment the solution exits the wand, the temp of the solution is falling. At the peak, it is liquefying waxy greases. Within a fraction of second it is well within the range of just below the cloud point and emulsification takes place.

The bottom line is that you don't really hear of situations where turning down the heat actually makes cleaning go faster or better ( anyway provided you are not spraying live steam to begin with).