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Hot take: I tried a 50/50 mix of water and vinegar for cleaning a boiler tube bundle and it went really wrong.
I was on a shutdown job in Cleveland last month and a guy on the crew swore by it for light scale, so I gave it a shot on a small section. The mix ate through the scale way too fast and left a weird, almost sticky film that took twice as long to scrub off with a wire brush. Has anyone else had a bad result with a homebrew cleaner like that, or did I just mess up the mix?
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thomas_sanchez2mo ago
Ha! Sounds like you invented a new kind of sludge instead of cleaning. Guess chemistry doesn't care about your good intentions.
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claire8725mo ago
Yeah, that re-deposited gunk sounds like the worst part. I've seen that happen before with a citric acid mix that went too hot too fast. You end up trading one problem for a stickier, harder to remove one.
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the_tessa5mo ago
That "weird, almost sticky film" sounds like it re-deposited... the acid pulled the scale off so fast it just stuck everything back on the wall in a new, worse way.
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