Aluminum Cylinder Cleaning & Recycling
It is not recommended to clean cylinders using sanding or abrasive blasting methods. These techniques can inadvertently remove base metal along with surface contaminants, potentially reducing the cylinder’s wall thickness and compromising its structural integrity. If sanding or abrasive blasting is employed, the post-treatment wall thickness must be verified using appropriate non-destructive testing methods (e.g., ultrasonic thickness gauging) to ensure it remains above the minimum design wall thickness specified for safe operation. So "How do we clean aluminum cylinders which have been in service?"
For complete paint removal from a cylinder we recommend the use of a paint stripper to remove paint from aluminum cylinders.
Picture contains 3 aluminum cylinder tanks, 2 have been through a cycle of StripOxy 6842 to remove all paint, labels, and adhesive. The third aluminum tank shows what the tanks look like prior to stripping process.
