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IBC Recycle USA
Blog · July 12, 2023 · 7 min read

Cleaning Residual Chemicals: What Three Common Categories Need

A wash recipe is not a one-size-fits-all sequence. Different residual chemistries demand different temperatures, dwell times, and chemistries themselves. Here is the recipe for three of the categories we see most often.

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Surfactants

Surfactant residues are notoriously persistent — they self-emulsify under conventional caustic wash and can re-deposit if the rinse is too brief. We use a cooler caustic concentration (1-2%) with extended dwell, followed by a long rinse with mechanical agitation.

Glycols

Glycol residues are easy to handle but easy to under-clean — they are odorless and miscible with the rinse, so visual inspection lies. We rely on a conductivity check on the rinse effluent to confirm removal. Hot caustic at 4-5%, single pass, conductivity confirmation.

Mild acids (citric, phosphoric, dilute hydrochloric)

Acids require neutralization before wash, not after. We pre-flush with a buffered alkaline solution to bring interior pH up to 6-7, then run a standard wash cycle. Skipping the pre-flush risks reactions with the caustic and a much harder cleanup.

What we will not wash

Tanks with prior contents we cannot identify, tanks with prior contents on our reject list (PCBs, certain pesticides, certain pharmaceuticals), and tanks that arrive with more than 10 gallons of residual liquid still in the bottle. The third case is a regulatory hazard we will not absorb.

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