Summer 2004 Hints

The below tip was taken with permission of the author from Indiana Drycleaning and Laundry Association's May/June 2004 Clean Briefs. It is written was Chris Birk, CED/CPD/CPW.

I was speaking with an individual who asked me how I dryclean something, and I explained the whole process including the garment sortation, solvent purification etc. I asked why he asked. He told me of a bad experience that he and his wife had. They had a cashmere scarf cleaned and it came back stiff. Upon soaking it in water with some shampoo, all sorts of gunk came out of it and now it is fine. He and his wife were totally turned off to drycleaning because of one bad experience.

During summer, we have to remember that the hotter the solvent gets, the more it will have a tendency to "pull" dye. Ideally, you should keep your solvent temperature under 80 degrees. The hotter the solvent (I am speaking here directly about perc), the more aggressive it can be. You must be concerned about your solvent condition and total solvent turnover. Total Solvent Turnover is the amount of solvent that is "distilled/reclaimed" per hundred pounds of clothes. That counts distillation and the amount you get back from "drying". You must also keep the necessary amount of carbon in your system which can help with dyes and some NVR but typically distillation is necessary.

I told last time of a cleaner who was having his solvent darken really fast and he thought he had filter problems. The problem was insufficient amount of carbon with the garments of today. He also mentioned his solvent had a light blue/green color to it. That is typically copper (or brass) corrosion caused by the perc being slightly acidic, instead of slightly alkaline. That is a problem. Another guy on the email forum has this condition and he said he was going to buy all new coils to solve that, and I said, wait a moment, unless you get your solvent "re-stabilized", changing the coils is not going to help. Spending $40 to solve the problem is cheaper than a few thousand for all new coils.

If you have never checked the pH of your solvent, it is a good thing to do. You can't check it directly, instead take distilled solvent in your system (from your machine, but be sure there is no detergent in it), and add some water, shake and then check the pH in the water. A much easier way I have found is to check the pH of the water coming out of the separator. Rather than simply use the old litmus paper like we had in school that was either just red or just blue, get litmus that is graduated so you can actually make a determination of what it is or get your self a swimming pool testing kit and use the phenol red test solution to test the pH.

If the solvent is not above 7.0 (7.0 is neutral above that is "alkaline", below 7.0 is acidic), then it should be. If it is too far acidic, you may have to have all of it disposed of by a hazardous waste hauler, have your whole machine flushed with a soda ash solution, etc. so it is good to resolve the problem. My recommendation to this person was to get a product that would bring his pH back in line. One such product is BUFF, distributed by Laidlaw. There are other products and there are even possibly other raw ingredients you can add, but you have to be sure you don't get the solvent too alkaline.

Why does the solvent get "acidic"? The usual reason is improper spotting procedures, that is using the drycleaning machine as a toilet to flush out chemicals instead of doing it on the board like one is supposed to do.

And summer is the months of cottons and many fine cottons will have a dryclean only label. If you cringe every time you get a white cotton blouse with a dryclean only label because you don't really want to dryclean it because either it will come out dingy or smelly, then obviously your solvent might need a bit of work.

One has to be careful. I know of a cleaners that did a bunch of smoke clothes (drycleaned), and that smell went into her solvent. She tried all sorts of things and just couldn't get rid of it. You see, even sometimes distillation won't remove it because the stink distills at the same temperature as the solvent. That is true of some oily type paint removers (OTPR), and that is why it needs flushed out on the board with VDS first before cleaning.

Finally two old timer's tricks: If your solvent has too much moisture in it, run a load of clean, dry cotton towels as that will suck up a lot of that moisture (wool blankets will do the same). Dry them thoroughly. The second trick is to slightly dampen some cotton towels and dryclean them and the cotton will act like a magnet, picking up loose dye and odors. Dry them thoroughly. They would then launder the towels and dry them and have them ready for use again.