Is polishing necessary after mechanically cleaning the reactor?
Thread Content
This post was last edited by cust008 on 2023-2-14 at 10:38. The reaction kettle is polished during manufacturing to achieve a mirror-like finish. After production for a certain period of time, it needs to be cleaned. Can its mirror-like finish be restored after cleaning with high-pressure water? Is another polishing session needed?
What cleaning method do you use? Is it solvent cleaning, or some other method that is corrosive to the surface (such as acid washing)? Since the inner surface is mirror-polished, high standards are required of the surface itself; therefore, when developing a cleaning plan, you need to take into account the protection of that surface. Polishing once is not that easy, and there are areas that cannot be polished using online polishing; moreover, there are considerations related to the polishing process itself (the sequence of steps in equipment manufacturing)
It’s high-pressure water cleaning, as well as the adhesion of polymers to the surface.
It might be better to soak it in warm water first and then wash it; high-pressure washing won’t have any effect on the surface finish, so it can be ignored
After cleaning, check whether it meets the equipment’s surface finish requirements; if not, proceed with polishing.
If polishing is really needed again, that’s going to be a huge hassle! There’s no need to consider anything else.
Polishing is not required for the polymerization reaction, unless your process has specific requirements! There are no problems after high-pressure water cleaning. During the reaction process, scaling may form on the walls of the polymerization reactor, but this does not affect the reaction itself; it only impacts heat transfer and thus indirectly affects reaction control. Long-term high-pressure water cleaning can, in theory, cause minor ‘point’ impacts on the tank walls, which will gradually accelerate scale formation.