Nothing. Whether you call it deliming, descaling or scale removal it’s the process of removing lime scale buildup from your heat exchange system.
Whenever a heat exchange process occurs, whether cooling or heating, calcium in the water become attached to the components around it, mainly tubes or heating elements or cooling elements. This is known as limescale (or lime scale, or simply lime) and it is a killer to heat exchange efficiency. Just a small coating of lime scale can reduce the efficiency of chiller tubes, or a hot water heating element by 10%. Add more lime scale and that efficiency drop increases. You get the idea.
So, whether you need to maintain a tankless hot water heater or clean chiller tubes, boiler tubes or heat exchanger tubes, getting rid of limescale is a top maintenance priority. How do you do that.
For hot water heaters , tankless water heaters or boiler tubes (water side), one of the best ways is with a chemical treatment. Using a pumping system, like Bucket Descaler, a chemical cleaner is circulated throughout the system for a period of time that will dissolve or delime the calcium lime scale buildup. For a tankless unit or domestic hot water heater this can take only about 20-40 minutes using a Descaler Liquid like SpeedyBright, classified by UL to NSF/ANSI Standard 60. Other chemicals are available but be careful when using on potable water systems.
For chiller tubes and heat exchanger tubes, a rotary tube cleaner is best. This type of tube cleaner uses a rotating brush, flexible shaft and integrated water flush to go down the tube and clean it manually of the scale, dirt and debris.
No matter what solution you decide to use, make sure that it is safe, effective and most of all, done on a continuing basis.
If you are interested, check out our Bucket Descaler below.
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