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Best acid/cleaner for stainless boiler

Postby NickA on Sat Feb 20, 2010 2:38 am

What is the best cleaning chemical for a stripped down stainless boiler? I have tried citric acid, and it has worked fine on the brass bits, but hasn't really cleaned the scale off the stainless interior of the boiler.
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Postby gyro on Sat Feb 20, 2010 3:33 am

I've used it on the innards of a Synesso and it dislodged a fair bit of scale, but I would be also be interested to hear if there are better alternatives for stainless. Having said that, I recall I used a fairly weak solution - the scale that was coating the steam boiler element (the only one I could easily get a visual on) basically fell off in large pieces which I then had to flush out of the boiler by partially removing the element and flooding the boiler from the other end. A much easier job if you have it all disassembled I am sure.

Cheers, Chris
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Postby Paul_Pratt on Sat Feb 20, 2010 8:21 am

I've done the Hydrochloric acid aka muriatic acid once as a test and it was just too messy. It did clean the boiler up a treat though but it was just a bit too dangerous for me. Also you risk some permanent damage to the steel so I never tried it again.*

Nowadays I just nuke the boilers with a shed load of citric acid, fill the boilers and heat them up. Just leave them for several days and each day I heat it up again.

You can also scrub the insides if you are lucky to find some wire brushes. I found a place in HK that sold some wire pipe brushes about 15cm long in various diameters and they have a threaded shaft so I was able to mount them on a long M10 stud and scrub by hand or in a drill. Works really well. The only drawback to these steel wire brushes are that they may contaminate the stainless steel and leave rust spots and/or the bristles themselves may come lose. So you have to clean the boiler really well afterwards.

Paul

* Although my boiler still to this day remains stainless, some stainless steel railings in the area where I stored the bottle of HCL acid (which was double bagged as well) went rusty.
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