Ammonia caution

I've noticed that cleaners are finding greater uses for ammonia in their operations as a cleaning agent. I have even read many articles that suggest soaking their corroded brass fittings in ammonia to clean them up.

I am no metallurgist, but my local welder informed me that ammonia will dissolve copper. I admit it, I had not heard that before, but he demonstrated it on a piece of copper tubing....didn't really dissolve it, but it did certainly etch it in the short soaking time.

So consider all the things that are made of copper and brass in your business and be careful what you do with that ammonia...especially guys running ammonia-based compounds through their machines.

I am going to dissemble all the plumbing on my butler this weekend and clean / replace as needed (I had a dreadful blockage in my piping last night that I don't want to experience again) and had actually received advice to soak everything in ammonia by my local distributor. Thank goodness for my welder, or I might have made my problems worse.

Thanks for the heads up on ammonia. I have some odorless ammonia but am now thinking twice about using it. I know that it will raise ph and has been used as a spotter for a long time, but at what consequence. I'll be doing more research on ammonia before trying it.

Pro Touch wrote:Thanks for the heads up on ammonia. I have some odorless ammonia but am now thinking twice about using it. I know that it will raise ph and has been used as a spotter for a long time, but at what consequence. I'll be doing more research on ammonia before trying it.

I agree, use it for spotting upholstery, but feel like testing a few things now.

Try this, take a late-era penny (1990's plus) that is copper clad and drop it into a glass of ammonia. My welder says that it remove the copper cladding. I plan on trying it later to see if there is truth to it.

With I had some ammonia, sounds like a fun science experiment. :albino:

Too bad some cleaning solutions that we purchase don't contain the odorless ammonia

Davey Cracker wrote:With I had some ammonia, sounds like a fun science experiment. :albino:

I just tossed a few pennies in a soak...will see what happens over some time, but the copper-clad pennies started changing appearance after less than a minute. Should be interesting....

24 hours later, the penney is still a penney....albeit a VERY shiney penney.

I don't know if it removed any of the copper cladding or just removed the tarnish, so I cannot say if it caused any damage.

I've got some of that ammonia. I haven't used it to clean with yet. I'll put some copper in it and leave it for a week to see what happens.

It is funny how once your mind locks onto a topic, you start to notice the topic more in your daily life.

I was just reading a handbook on reloading brass casings and it says to never use ammonia-based products as it will harden the brass and make it prone to cracks.

How many brass street elbows are in your system?

This is getting rather interesting...kind of in a bad way.

I use odorless in rocket sprayer or other sprayers. Not through machine. Going into waste tank not worried about because getting diluted. Good info.

I just tore down my machine's plumbing to find out why I didn't have any flow earlier this week. It was very strange to have a complete loss of water flow despite the pump pushing over 500 psi....now I know why.

The butler uses a simple ball valve to regulate temperature by mixing cold water with the water exiting the hx. I haven't used that valve in probably 2 years as I normally use a portable on upholstery and who would want colder water for carpets?

Well, when I descaled the machine last week, I opened the valve and I also opened the valve briefly when I winterized. When I did, some debris separated from the SS ball of the ball valve and wedged into the street elbow.

That isn't the surprise, nor the reason that I mention it under the topic of ammonia. The debris wasn't scale, soap build-up, or sand. The debris was a perfectly formed round disc of copper!

When I looked into the elbow, I swore it was a cap as there was no daylight and clearly a copper/brass bottom....but that just couldn't be. So, I ran a probe in there and pushed out the perfectly formed disc of copper.



Apparently, the rinse and emulsifiers or maybe it was the de-scaler, had been eating away at the brass over the last couple of years and pressing it against the SS ball of the shut ball valve to form a perfect disc. Once I opened the valve, the disc passed through and lodged into the elbow to form a cap.

I had used some ammonia-based over the years through the machine, but it was probably the de-scaler and time. I don't really know, but I am certainly paying more attention to what products are going through this machine from now on.

Pretty incredible. I never would have guessed that metal leached from your system and redeposited elsewhere would be the culprit. If cleaning chemicals could do this to metal what are they doing to carpet and more importantly our health?

I don't know what else it could have been.  I could clearly see a copper-like ring on the SS ball of the ball valve where I believe it came from.  I had good water flow until I opened that valve....then zip, nadda, nothing.

I wish I knew what chemical was to blame, but right now, I blame all of them.   No more using the chemical pump and descaling with vinegar here on out.  

Really weird finding this thing, but what else could it possibly be?

Is it actually "copper"?........it kinda looks like Brass in the pic.

It is brass. Smooth on one side and rough on the other.

So, strange.