An Environmentally-Friendly Parts Washer
By Stephen Cooke
Parts washers are incredibly handy and essential for cleaning and de-greasing oily parts. They’re also flammable, toxic, and caustic, and you have to change the nasty cleaning solution regularly — until now. Microbial bacteria in Bio-Circle’s “Bioremediation” washer eat oil and grease and excrete water and oxygen, automatically renewing the non-toxic, water-based cleaning solution.
According to Bio-Circle, the bioremediation process has been in use for decades to clean up oil spills and decontaminate soil without further damaging the environment. They simply adapted the process to address the similar problem of parts degreasing.
Bio-Circle’s cleaning solution — called Bio-Circle-L — contains the microbes while the washer heats the solution to the 105-degree temperature required to activate them. The solution will continue to devour your grease, soot, wax, and so on as long as the machine remains plugged in or you allow it to completely clear the surface of oil before shutdown. (The microbes can enter a “sleep” mode, but require oxygen to survive.) All you need to do is top up the tank and empty the unit’s 3-stage filter that traps grit and other deposits.
Bio-Circle sells two models: the 40″ x 31″ x 40″ IO-400 which has a tank capacity of 26 gallons and can hold up to 440 lbs, and the smaller 32″ x 23″ x 41″ IO-200 with a 21-gallon tank which holds up to 220 lbs. The only bad news is price. The IO-200 starts around $1,500 and the IO-400 retails for a cool three grand.
But don’t forget to factor in the cost of your current unit’s daily or weekly fluid service. And what price can you put on being good to your planet?
Bioremediation Parts Washer [BioCircle]
PS: It’s worth a trip to Bio-Circle’s website just to check out the Bio-Circle-L MSDS. It’s easily the most bland MSDS we’ve ever seen for a cleaning solution.
July 1st, 2007 at 1:27 am
Maybe it’s me… but it just seems like an environmentally friendly parts washer is kinda wrong…
July 7th, 2007 at 11:42 am
[...] An Environmentally-Friendly Parts Washer Parts washers are, ironically, one of the most environmentally dangerous tools in the shop — yet are absolutely necessary for restoration work. TM’s resident Dealmonger Stephen found a better solution: a washer that uses safe cleaning fluid and bacteria that eats away the oil each night to refresh the fluid. [...]
July 8th, 2007 at 12:49 pm
$1500 is a wee bit too much to make me start caring about the environment - at least in this aspect.
Don’t get me wrong - this sounds quite cool, from a technological aspect. Who wouldn’t want their own oil-eating bacteria?
Of course, it’d be my luck that they’d mutate into oil monsters in my shop, and the next time I go out to work on something, I become food.
October 2nd, 2007 at 8:54 am
I think if you believe in your health and the safety of ALL employees’ you will find the BioCircle parts washer the only alternative! Why question HOW it works? Question, DOES it work. Does it clean oil and greases? Yes. I can tell you that last year we bought our first BioCircle and now we have one in every department (7 machines in total). The reason we decided to use the BioCircle was because it cleaned the oil and grease off of our parts better than any other water-based system we have tried in the past and on the market today! Give them a call and try it out… I think you will be impressed!
January 9th, 2008 at 12:09 am
brian N is absolutly for this bio-circle parts washer, it’s normal he’s a sale rep of bio-circle company (see on a web site http://www.biocircle.com sale rep for toronto GTA)
June 17th, 2008 at 1:42 pm
DEAR JOHN
Where ever we are in our walks of life, we are bound to have differing of opinions. Regardless of where we hang our profession hats and what avenue in our business lives we take, a positive response to a technology that promotes an environmentally safe approach to the workplace should be welcomed and tested prior to forming a bias opinion.
The world of maintenance, overhaul and repair has relied on chlorinated and halogenated hydrocarbons, Stoddard solutions, mineral spirits and petroleum based distillates as cleaners and degreasers as a recognized standard cleaning method for as long as most of us can remember. This group of products is associated for their through cleaning, rapid drying performance. However, a number of commonly used solvents are ozone depleting substances. The application of many of these solvents have become strictly regulated as to the amount that can be used within industry while others which are still in use are scheduled for phase-out in just a few years. A large majority of common solvents contribute to the creation of low level ozone, a component of smog produced when the volatile organic compounds (VOC) in the solvents evaporate into the atmosphere.
Many of these regularly daily used solvents are highly toxic to humans, wildlife, aquatic plants and fish. The opportunity for long term chronic or acute effects is well documented, with some recycled solvents having known carcinogens at various volume levels noted on the warning labels. The risk to employee’s can go unnoticed in the short term as workers are regularly in close contact with solvents for extended periods of time. Without proper training, supervision, personal protection equipment or ventilation, airborne concentrations of solvent vapour can easily reach dangerous levels, not just for workers, but for others in close proximity or throughout the same facility. The elevated risk of fire with combustible solvents is ever present when strong oxidizers or oxidizing agents are accidentally mixed which can be ignited by a heat energy originating from a weak ignition source such as friction, physical impact or static electricity.
Valuable time spent searching for alternatives should have you step back and ask the questions:
“Why am I using harmful cleaning solvents or degreasers in the first place?”
“What options your company can take to eliminate or, at least, reduce the use of these harmful substances?”
Corrective action to eliminate using solvents or degreasers is always the safest, most environmentally sound option.
SEE JAY LENO’S TAKE ON THE BIOCIRCLE
http://www.jaylenosgarage.com/video/video_player.shtml?vid=190181