Cleaning Plastic Bins (formerly used for Canola Oil)

Cellar Rats (ITB)
1

We occasionally make use of caged plastic bins that were formerly used for various industrial food products.

Some of the ones we got in recently had Canola Oil in them.

Does anyone have any best practices on how to clean these appropriately?

We generally use a combination of PerCarb, Steam Pressure Washing, and Citric Acid…

Is there a commercial degreaser that might be recommended for this process?

We’d like to plan to ferment in them, as necessary, once we cut the tops off.

Thanks!

2

PAA maybe? Seems like might need a stronger acid (and possibly base, too). Oil. Yuck. Lots of hot water and scrubbing. :stuck_out_tongue:

3

I like those as fermentors, and I think I had the same cleanup issue. I think I followed soda ash with a spray down with cheap vodka. I can’t remember the reasoning, but it seemed to cut the oil. Remember to keep the top crossbars, and reattach one after you cut the top off but before you dump the pomace into the press.

4

Rinse with HOT water then scrub with NaOH. Repeat. The oil will react (partially) to form soap.

5

Thanks!

Andrew, in what form do you use the Sodium Hydroxide (liquid?) and where do you source it?

6

I like to follow everything with cheap vodka. [cheers.gif]

7

It comes in flakes or powder from chemical supply houses. Sprinkle it on and scrub. Wear eye and skin protection. USE CAUTION. It does work though.

I have experience with oily messes from making biodiesel.

8

We got it at American Tartaric , and yeah it works very well. A little nasty, but perfect for this particular application.

Does anyone have any comments regarding the suitability of these caged plastic bins for fermenting?

I’ve never seen them used as such, but it sure seems like they will work well and are cheap at about 20% of the price of a one ton MacroBin.

We were thinking of just cutting open the mid section of the top (the portion that has the screw top) , and leaving the crossbars in place to stand on for punch downs.

9

See post of Stewart above.

10

I removed cross-bars and cut off the whole top. I felt like punch downs were easier with them off, and I’m not sure they’re strong enough to stand on. If you plan on dumping into the press, you’ll need to cut the top all the way to the edge on at least part of thetop so that the pomace will slide out. The same concern led me to only relace one of the cross-bars for dumping – especially with whole cluster lots, the pomace will hang up on the bars. The mistake was in forgetting to replace any cross-bars on my first attempt at dumping into the press and having the plastic part come flying out of the cage.
I felt like these were a nice sized mass to work with. They’ll dissipate heat pretty well if you leave some space between them and build/retain heat pretty well if you mass them together and run some of that silver bubble wrap around the perimeter.
I think I’ll try to fix a bit of screen over the valves on the inside of bin this year to facilitate draining. Otherwise, it takes a bit of effort to keep that valve clear during draining.
A trial run of filling with water before fermentating to check soundness isn’t a bad idea. I’ve discovered bad valves after filling with grapes, and its a drag to deal with at that point.