Efficient and environmentally friendly disk cleaning for mineral oil centrifuges
25 Sep 2017
Manual cleaning of mineral oil centrifuges’ disk stacks is a tedious and time consuming process, often taking more than eight hours. To streamline this task, we launched GEA EffiClean, an innovative solution that cleans separator’s disk stacks in just 20 minutes inside the running machine. Moreover, the in place cleaning that EffiClean offers is both environmentally and user friendly.
Disk cleaning absolutely necessary
Mineral oil treatment is known as a dirty business. After operation and/or processing of feed products with high variation in quality, the disk stacks can become very dirty. Sticky layers of asphaltenes are built up on the inner surface of disks. The result is decreased disk gaps which limits the separation efficiency. This forces the operator to turn down the performance of the centrifuge in order to not risk damaging downstream equipment.
During manual cleaning, eight or more hours of operation are lost. To speed up the manual procedure, operators are sometimes forced to use improper cleaning techniques. This leads to a high risk of irreversible damage on the separators integral parts. Further, since particles accumulate based on a surface’s friction coefficient, worn out and damaged disk surfaces become dirty much faster.
Escaping from manual disk cleaning with GEA EffiClean
GEA EffiClean allows you to clean disks directly where the centrifuge is located, saving precious maintenance time and optimizing the reliability, availability and efficiency of the centrifuges. Mounted on an easy-to-use trolley, the equipment combines an environmentally friendly cleaning agent and a cleaning process that reflects over 100 years of experience in separation technology. Specially designed for mineral oil applications, the stainless steel unit with a footprint of only 0.5 x 0.8 m fits in narrow spaces and it’s tough enough to resist the demanding environment.
The GEA EffiClean1090 cleaning agent, exclusively sold by us, combines optimal cleaning with an environmentally friendly formula and offers the best compatibility with the materials used in our centrifuges. Sold as a concentrate, the cleaning agent is diluted with 90% water at the time of use. Only a very small amount of chemical is needed per cleaning cycle, which enables very small and easy to handle packaging sizes.
For optimized user safety, the cleaning agent is connected to the cleaning unit, which automatically adds the right amount of cleaning solution during the cleaning process. The operator does not get in physical contact with the cleaning agent.
