Bought my first dist setup not too long ago, came with a revco standup cryo, an 8” wiped film [53cfm pump + diffusion hopefully it works] - sadly glass, but it’s a start -, but the jacket is wickedly dirty from burnt heat transfer oil {the heater coil burned up and pushed all the burned all through the jacket}, plus these stupid styrofoam packing beads I can’t get totally out ) and a 50L roto (Their prior “consultant” wanted to run food colouring through the condenser coil so I’ve got that to clean up). If anyone’s got any suggestions for the cleaning or getting them beads out, let’s hear it!
Currently I’ve tried dawn and water as well as isopropyl. Each seemed to do a little clean up but there’s still heavvvy residue left. We plan on trying to use an air compressor to get themselves a king beads out but I’m not 100% sure it’s gunna work. We’ve currently tried using negative pressure with a vacuum and it got most of them out but sadly there still a dozen or so stuck in the fucker and in the condenser before the cold trap which are just as hard before of the smaller holes just my luck. I was thinking acetone or something - diesel was mentioned but I’m not about making napalm and don’t wanna melt plastic I wanna dissolve it or shrink it
Beads are ethanol and hydrocarbon soluble, they should come all the way out if you flood your system with warm ethanol and drop it out.
As for your jacket, you need to select the fluid you will use for the duration of the ownership (not really but you should stick with one) and Id suggest checking out each brands cleaning fluid. For example there’s duratherm fluids and they have their system cleaning product. So you could clean with their fluid and then run whatever duratherm thermal transfer fluid you need. They have a Food Grade line and they have their standard fluid. Other fluid companies are marlotherm/Eastman chemical, dynalene/dynalene, Inc, etc. I am sure they have similar bath cleaning products that are comparable/compatible. Might want to do a hard clean out procedure too.
Warm ethanol is good, soap water is good, both is better. I’d even consider limonene at some point. Flush with clean water then clean ethanol at the end
Any time we get new glassware in house (especially if it’s just “new to us”) we do the ole 4-step wash. 99% IPA, then 10% phosphoric acid, then 2.0M KOH, then 3% HOOH. Make sure you rinse the fuck out of it with hot water between, you don’t want your acids, bases, and/or peroxides mixing with each other. I’ve never seen anything but scratches left when done.
You don’t need distilled until the last wash but it won’t hurt. The hotter the better though, especially with the base wash. It takes that gum and scum right off after the acid wash
How detrimental would those tiny tiny styrofoam beads be to a diffusion pump… I ask because they clearly didn’t get all the little ones out before running stuff the first time and I’m finding some just in the top and I’m hoping they won’t kill the pump if left unchecked
I was reading in one of the posts about a person who coated they’re SPD kit with burnt nasty gunk.
The recommended solvent was car shop paint thinners because of it’s content of Toluene.
I don’t know if this will help in your situation but i thought i should say something and hopefully it will spark a light in someones head that has more knowledge than me lol.
Toluene would be good for marlotherm for sure. I don’t know the structure of this oil or duratherm off the top of my head though. But for the inside of the column I figured I’d drop the cleaning sop I use. I’ll add a water step between orange flavored zep and alcohol though. Standard Operating Procedure for Cleaning.pdf (204.1 KB)
Just a little update, bought some limonene and acetone. Since then limonene was so damnnn expensive I just went with acetone and it’s actually been working pretty nicely; was just the jacketed area so I figured fuck why not best it with something like acetone
I really wanted to run it through the heater, just for the pumping action, on the lowest temp setting, but after the older one setting on fire… fire + acetone = baaaayd
I FUCKED UP! I should have known better I said it was gunna build vapour pressure and we’d need to release it… well it was too late by the time she started leaking… boom went the outer… figured fuck well if it’s just the outer jacket I can get it repaired… use heat guns in the meantime… nope inner cracked and fell apart just my luck… coils still good but I’m pretty sure it doesn’t matter at this point cause I can probably order a whole new evap body from China cheaper than repairing
hopefully it works] - sadly glass, but it’s a start -, but the jacket is wickedly dirty from burnt heat transfer oil {the heater coil burned up and pushed all the burned all through the jacket}, plus these stupid styrofoam packing beads I can’t get totally out 
) and a 50L roto (Their prior “consultant” wanted to run food colouring through the condenser coil so I’ve got that to clean up). If anyone’s got any suggestions for the cleaning or getting them beads out, let’s hear it!
just my luck. I was thinking acetone or something - diesel was mentioned but I’m not about making napalm and don’t wanna melt plastic I wanna dissolve it or shrink it
I should have known better I said it was gunna build vapour pressure and we’d need to release it… well it was too late by the time she started leaking… boom went the outer… figured fuck well if it’s just the outer jacket I can get it repaired… use heat guns in the meantime… nope inner cracked and fell apart 
just my luck… coils still good but I’m pretty sure it doesn’t matter at this point cause I can probably order a whole new evap body from China cheaper than repairing