Cleaning tool(s) for CMP Powerclean?

[RAAV]

Does anyone have suggestions for what tool to get to clean my salt generator?

I tried scraping it off with a hard plastic pry tool but the buildup is fairly heavy.

Do I use a brush? Can I use a low pressure power washer potentially to remove the immediate buildup then stick with a brush for regular maintenance?

 

[RAAV]

 

[mknauss]

If you cannot get the scale out with a stream of water from a normal hose end nozzle or popsicle stick, then use a 4:1 water/acid mix and soak it in that. When it stops bubbling, rinse the cell.

By managing your pool water chemistry closer, you should not have to clean the cell of scale.

 

[BowserB]

Hey Marty, when you say 4:1 what strength MA are you assuming?

 

[JoyfulNoise]

Hey Marty, when you say 4:1 what strength MA are you assuming?

It doesn’t really matter. A 4:1 water/acid mix of either 15% or 31.45% MA is going to have a pH well below 1.

My suggestion would be to be as least aggressive as possible and use cleaning vinegar (6% acetic acid) first before you go with muriatic acid. Any acid solution should only be in contact with the plates long enough for the bubbling to stop and then thoroughly rinsed. Never leave the plates soaking in acid for long periods of time as that will dissolve the catalyst coating.

 

[newdude]

+1.
It’s close enough for government work either way. If you are using half strength acid, it’ll really be 8:1 and still work, just take twice as long. (4 mins instead of 2, etc).

Trying vinegar first like said above might avoid the acid altogether.

 

[JoyfulNoise]

+1.
It’s close enough for government work either way. If you are using half strength acid, it’ll really be 8:1 and still work, just take twice as long. (4 mins instead of 2, etc).

Trying vinegar first like said above might avoid the acid altogether.

Just to clarify a few things ... any acid will lower the pH of the cleaning solution and low pH makes the catalyst material (mostly ruthenium) very soluble in aqueous solutions. The chemistry of transition metals (ruthenium being one of them) is highly complex but pretty much all of them are susceptible to higher degrees of solubility when the pH decreases. Muriatic acid is a strong mineral acid that provides lots of chloride ions. Chloride ions help to stabilize the metal ion in solution and so solubility goes up. Acetic acid (vinegar) presents acetate ions that are very good at complexing with transition metal ions thereby increasing their solubility in solution. Thus, there really is no "safe" acid to use to clean the SWG plates. Both calcium scale and the transition metal catalyst will be dissolved. This is why it is important to first try knocking off as much of the scale as possible mechanically (without scratching the plates) and then use the least concentrated amount of acid to get the rest. Eventually the coating will fail and expose the underlying titanium metal that has no catalytic activity, but that's just the normal service life of an SWG cell.

 

[flynwill]

The manual for my Jandy SWG says to use a 10:1 mix of MA and water... (Again without specifying what strength of MA).