Metal finishing Q&As since 1989

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How to degrease aluminum honeycomb cores?

August 11, 2008

Q. Dear,

I have been using vapor degrease with trichloroethylene for cleaning aluminum honeycomb core.
But, I have to stop using it because of latest environmental regulation.

Can I use aqueous cleaning for cleaning aluminum honeycomb core?
Or, solvent manual cleaning?

Thanks in advance !

DC.Park

Dong-cheol Park
Chemical process engineer - Korea

A. Hi, Dong-cheol. The easiest fix, but it may be temporary, is to switch to an acceptable vapor degreasing solvent replacement like n-propyl bromide.

Converting to aqueous cleaning, while more difficult, may be the better long-term solution though. Usually ultrasonics are an important part of cleaning aluminum in aqueous solutions because both electrocleaning and strong alkalis are incompatible with aluminum.

Regards,

Ted Mooney, P.E.
Striving to live Aloha
finishing.com - Pine Beach, New Jersey
August 2008

P.S. April 2013: Please check the latest updates on the safety and environmental suitability of n-propyl bromide before following this suggestion. Most silver bullets tarnish after we've acquired some years of field experience.

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Q.
Hello there,

I work in a Electroless Nickel Plating plant and we are having a hard time degreasing the aluminium parts to be nickel plated.
The problem is we can't use a powerful detergent. The parts are first rinsed in the first tank containing the degreaser (Nitric Acid 50%). Then the piece is rinsed in the second tank with water and then to a tank with NaOH. We can't use detergent because our water tank isn't enough to clean all the detergent and it can't mix to the NaOH tank.

What other non-detergent degreaser could we use?

Thank you.

Alexandre Barros
- Sao Paulo, Brasil
April 15, 2013