Using Rydlyme to Clean a Heat Exchanger

[boden36]

Last week I ran Rydlyme through the engine's (Yanmar 3JH) salt water passages, including the heat exchanger and I thought you might like to know how it worked.
The engine had never been treated (10 yrs old).
It was in there for three hours, the first two with a circulating pump, the last without ( the pump quit).
Afterwards, on removing the end caps from the heat exchager it was clear that the tubes in the exchanger were beautifully clean, except for one little area where there must have been an air bubble.
One of the end caps still had two clumps of calcification that had not responded to the treatment and this was a little disappointing, as if it had subsequently broken free, some of the tubes could have been blocked, negating the cleaning exercise.
I would suggest that it is well worth using something like this, but you should still pull things apart to check afterwards.
Regards, Richard.

[Weta]

Yep Rydlyme is very good at cleaning heat exchangers. I do quite a bit of this work here in New Zealand and have a web site you can check out to see the proper procedure; PM me . Rydlyme must be pumped throughout the procedure, its a shame your pump failed but not a biggie, you got most of the scale.

[GordMay]

Thanks for the report, Richard.

Did you check out compatibility issues between the constituents of Rylyme and the Block & Heat Exchanger material(s)?

Rydlyme contains a strong caustic, Hydrogen Chloride, which may cause adverse reactions with some alloys of aluminum, magnesium, and/or zinc.

They have a modified product for marine applications:
➥ http://www.rydlymemarine.com/pdfs/MA...%20COMPATI.pdf

[svHyLyte]

We just used Rydlyme (Marine version) to clear the coils in the heat exchanger of our 16,000 BTU air conditioner. For this exercise I used a cheap (at WM $19.95 USD) submersible 360 GPH bilge pump in a bucket with a gallon of Rydlym and fresh water (50/50) that pumped the solution into the discharge side of the system and a return hose connected to the (normal) input side of the system and led back to the bucket. I circulated this for about two hours and then reconnected the normal discharge side of the system and pumped the solution through the input side to fill the dicharge line back to the transom. This sat over night before we pumped fresh water through the systerm for some while and then reconnected the raw water. Afterward the difference in the flow rate through the A/C was quite noticable and our "Condensator", which had earlier quite working, resumed operation with a vengence (no-zero-nada condensate making its way to the bilge).

The RydLyme certainly seems to live up to its advertising although the material is not inexpensive--in our case $39.00 a gallon.

FWIW...

[boden36]

Gord, thanks for your comment - I told them what it was for and they sent me the marine version. Next time I will go with HyLyte's idea and use a submerible bilge pump.
Regards, Richard.