Hot Tank Process

What exactly is the Process of "Hot Tank" That machine shops do? Is it just boiling water with some sort of cleaning agent?

 

Caustic soda, I think sodium hydroxide is the tech name. It eats paint, grease, and aluminum.

 

Hot water and draino. Caustic soda and water is what my uncle used in his radiator "cooker". Of course that was before aluminum radiators.

 

What does it do to rust?

Does hot water and draino really work?

 

When I was in High School, I worked as a "machine shop grunt" and operated a huge tank we used to clean compressor cylinders. I do not know about Drano, but we used soda ash (or sodium carbonate for the chemist geeks like me). We bought it from the pool store in 50lb bags. I do not know the final concentration, ash was added till the tank would clean a cylinder overnight.

Most of the parts we dipped were not rusty, but man did it do a number on paint, grease, carbon, oil, etc. Key point is you must heat the solution for it to perform well.

 

Thanks

I was wondering what to do to get

rust out of the water jackets

up for suggestions please

 

hot tank solutions don't generally do much to rust. Might try "mechanical means", that is, use a long screwdriver and chip away at it....which is not much fun....

also there are different kinds of "hot tanks", some are just a vat, some are a jet washer, and there are different chemicals for them, some eat up non-ferrous metals, others do not.