Any of you lads know of a good Aluminum tank & catwalk cleaner? Not one of the watered down ones. Need a good recommended one.
Cheers.
millsie6379:
Any of you lads know of a good Aluminum tank & catwalk cleaner? Not one of the watered down ones. Need a good recommended one.
Cheers.
If you don’t mind living dangerously, then hydrochloric acid is your friend, obtainable from old-fashioned hardware shops as “spirits of salts”. Don’t get any on your skin, don’t breathe it in, and I never told you this. 
Just used some neat acid cleaner it was Autoglym about a gallon or more was £14 ,made a great job of some 15 yr old wheels on the inside .it did say to water down though .
this one was not quite as strong
Thanks guys… [emoji106]
Ab blue works well
Be careful using very strong acids you will get good results, which seems great, but wash off well or even neultralise with an alkali as you can get trouble later as it will continue to react. On the aluminium pieces of box bodies I just used to scrub the oxidation off with some coarse wire wool, need quite a bit of elbow grease but gave a nice brushed metal finish if you used increasing finer wire wool.
Own Account Driver:
Be careful using very strong acids you will get good results, which seems great, but wash off well
Great advice so far, but the next bit can be quite dangerous for exactly the reason you have given, unless you have a good understanding of chemistry.
For instance… which alkali would be best for neutralising which acid??
I’ve no idea of the answer to that, but I do know that it’s a question best left to chemists.
Own Account Driver:
… or even neultralise with an alkali as you can get trouble later as it will continue to react.
Acid/alkali reactions can give rise to sudden violent reactions which result in hot corrosive spitting unpredictably in all directions.
On a bad day, somebody who gets hit with the spitting stuff might get a really nasty (and extremely painful) chemical burn that needs hospital treatment.
That’s disregarding the possibility of the evolution of toxic/corrosive fumes made by the reaction. 
Lots of water (dilution) is the best way of lessening the corrosive effects of acids.
Baking soda is a good alkali for neutralising acid.
I was taught how to wash batteries with it when I was at College.
On old batteries that you could top up, sometimes the acid can get on top of the battery and you can get a discharge from the poles through the acid sat on the battery top. Wash them with Baking soda and it neutralises the acid and stops the slow discharge…
You’re not going to have to go all Walter White to neutralise a bit of acidic cleaner. TFR is usually pretty alkaline so wil probably do the job in due course if it’s used or as mentioned something like baking soda.
If you poured a drum of industrial strength caustic soda solution into a drum of hydrochloric acid you’d have problems.
Own Account Driver:
You’re not going to have to go all Walter White to neutralise a bit of acidic cleaner. TFR is usually pretty alkaline so wil probably do the job in due course if it’s used or as mentioned something like baking soda.If you poured a drum of industrial strength caustic soda solution into a drum of hydrochloric acid you’d have problems.
Agreed on both points OAD, but there would very probably still be some rather obnoxious fumes evolved from the reaction, so it’s best done in a well ventilated place.
Admittedly my experience with cleaning and the chemicals involved is in another sector, but, by the time you’ve rinsed the tank down after cleaning it, there might be enough residue to promote a little surface rust on nearby steel components if left un-neutralised, there won’t be enough to worry about fumes from reactions with other properly diluted chemicals.
DON’T allow anything other than a very dilute alkaline solution to remain in contact with ally, or you’ll corrode/stain it and be back to square one, anything like TFR concentrate or alkaline floor cleaning concentrate/degreaser will eat ally away as well as discolouring it over time, leave a little in an old foil pie dish in a safe place if you want to prove this to yourself, but stand it in a plastic container, after long enough it’ll eat right through it.
If you’re using an acidic ally cleaner in a work environment, make sure you get a COSHH/MSDS sheet for it and keep said on file somewhere ( same for the TFR and any other cleaning chemicals you use / keep on site ) and make sure to store concentrates such that at minimum acidic and alkaline concentrates can never come into contact even if the containers leak!
Once you start looking at such data sheets, you’ll find yourself amazed at just how many commercial (rather than domestic) floor cleaning/degreasing products, carpet cleaners, and cheap brands of TFR, are caustic soda, dye, and a touch of detergent, in varying concentrations.