I have a 1 micron welded sintered disc that I find is not easy to clean. I have been washing it in an ultrasonic bath with Alconox just like I do with all of my other equipment however I am having a hard time getting all of the Alconox solution rinsed out of the welded disc.
How do you clean your welded disc filters?
After the ultra sonic bath I rinsed it with tap water, then distilled water, let it simmer in a rice cooker with distilled water then put it on bottom of a 4" x 42" column and pushed 10 gallons of distilled water thru it at 15 PSI and it still has some alconox solution in it.
Hey y’all! It’s been a while!
But I’m just now stumbling on this article! I’m having difficulty getting my 20u welded sintered disc on my CRC to be clean to my liking… I know exactly what you mean when you say you can’t get the alconox out, I see bubbles come out seemingly forever when I’m blasting it with an airgun. I’m just wondering is there a quicker method to cleaning sintered discs. I’ve been using an ultrasonic, trying to avoid having to strap it all back on the CRC just to clean it.
In short: is there a way to fully clean welded centered discs without running fluids through them?
Alconox likes to be dissolved by water. Air isn’t likely to get the job done and neither will most solvents, they’re better for drying the frit after the water has gone through
I’ve got a quick question someone may be able to answer. Im running an Mep 30 setup w a 3" crc column. we’re having troubles with the 5um sintered disc clogging every couple of runs. should I be pulling a vacuum from the top between runs or using my pump to vacuum from the bottom? I feel vacuuming from the top is causing my medias to pull into the 5 um disc causing slow downs in my processing.
@LuisMendoza 5um disc on top then B80/silica blended, t5,de, and a 1um disc at the bottom. Powders are fine (carbon chemistry)
I got some CRX and CRY samples from @MediaBros that seem to work pretty damn well with less clogging of the discs. Ran the same media 4x times w no issues and great color.
You don’t want your powders on or near your sintered discs, that’s asking for a problem. Add a couple filter plates above your 5micron. Do a couple coffee filters with retention ring in the first plate and in the next plate use papers ~10micron with retention rings.
@Hansel what kind of retention rings would you recommend? I do use coffee filters at the bottom of the column on top of the 1um disc. Read somewhere that they were using tampons on top of the 5um disc.
how tall are the tampons? I used w1 and flat felt and the w1 went through the 1 micron felt and a 5 micron disk. Good thing I ordered a 1 micron disk and it showed up the day I ran. I also found that putting the disk on my sink drain pulled a vac and made water flow through the disk.
Wow reading this worries me about what im about to deal with lol. I just had my 1st run with my crc i didnt know they were gonna be so hard to deal with! Ive never even heard of alconox until now lol
Im curious about that tek as well. But am probably gonna go off of @Hansel recommendation for the time being. I stopped vacuuming my column from the top, I believe it’s sucking powders into my 5um disc. Just trying to avoid cleaning my disc every other run and achieve the best flow rates. Rn my best time for a crc run start to finish on a single column is about 45min. About 3-3.5lbs dry up to 6-7 fresh frozen per column.
