Hello All,
During our first caustic cleanings on brand new tanks, we ran into a residue issue with our Caustic Soda. To give some background, the tanks (brew house + FV’s) were manufactured by Specific Mechanical and they’re brand new. This was our first full CIP test with Caustic and we a have plenty of experience doing this process in work prior to having our own brewery.
We followed the suggestion from our chemical supplier and made a 1% caustic solution with 50 centigrade H20. We performed CIP for 30 minutes and then rinsed with clean water. All via our CIP system.
1. I’ve attached photos of the inside of our mash-tun after letting the 50 centigrade 1% caustic solution soak for a few hours (this was a test outside of our CIP test) and you can see the white residue left from the caustic soda.
Residue Photos - https://drive.google.com/folderview?...zg&usp=sharing
2. At first we thought it was from our own h20 – which is a relatively high alkalinity (8-8.5 pH) but we mixed the residue with water and tested the pH and it’s over 11 leading us to believe that it’s caustic residue
3. I’ve attached the technical sheet for the caustic we used, it’s in Spanish so here are the highlights
Technical Sheet - Caustic - https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B7B...ew?usp=sharing
a. General Use Description - Product is specifically designed for effectively cleaning all organic material in CIP, UHT equipment, piping, tanks, and general equipment.
b. Ingredients: Sodium Hydroxide, CAS # 1310-72-2, %(m/m) 30-50, OSH (PEL) ppm 2mg/m3
c. Specific Weight – 1.430-1.530
d. pH 13.00-14.00
Our thoughts:
• 50 centigrade h20 is too hot – perhaps try with ambient temp h20
• Bad caustic soda – this caustic seems very viscous compared with caustics that we’ve had prior experience with in the USA. It seems to be 2x-3x more difficult to wash off your hands.
• Too much calcium in the h20
Any help or thoughts on folks who have run into this problem would be greatly appreciated!!
Thanks!
During our first caustic cleanings on brand new tanks, we ran into a residue issue with our Caustic Soda. To give some background, the tanks (brew house + FV’s) were manufactured by Specific Mechanical and they’re brand new. This was our first full CIP test with Caustic and we a have plenty of experience doing this process in work prior to having our own brewery.
We followed the suggestion from our chemical supplier and made a 1% caustic solution with 50 centigrade H20. We performed CIP for 30 minutes and then rinsed with clean water. All via our CIP system.
1. I’ve attached photos of the inside of our mash-tun after letting the 50 centigrade 1% caustic solution soak for a few hours (this was a test outside of our CIP test) and you can see the white residue left from the caustic soda.
Residue Photos - https://drive.google.com/folderview?...zg&usp=sharing
2. At first we thought it was from our own h20 – which is a relatively high alkalinity (8-8.5 pH) but we mixed the residue with water and tested the pH and it’s over 11 leading us to believe that it’s caustic residue
3. I’ve attached the technical sheet for the caustic we used, it’s in Spanish so here are the highlights
Technical Sheet - Caustic - https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B7B...ew?usp=sharing
a. General Use Description - Product is specifically designed for effectively cleaning all organic material in CIP, UHT equipment, piping, tanks, and general equipment.
b. Ingredients: Sodium Hydroxide, CAS # 1310-72-2, %(m/m) 30-50, OSH (PEL) ppm 2mg/m3
c. Specific Weight – 1.430-1.530
d. pH 13.00-14.00
Our thoughts:
• 50 centigrade h20 is too hot – perhaps try with ambient temp h20
• Bad caustic soda – this caustic seems very viscous compared with caustics that we’ve had prior experience with in the USA. It seems to be 2x-3x more difficult to wash off your hands.
• Too much calcium in the h20
Any help or thoughts on folks who have run into this problem would be greatly appreciated!!
Thanks!
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