How to Wash Cleanroom Garments

In this video, you can learn how to properly wash your cleanroom garments. When doing so, there are two factors that must be taken into account: water and detergent. Valutek offers this video to inform you on how to extend the life expectancy of your cleanroom garment.

Script from Video:
Source:  Valutek

hi I’m Greg Hyland, and welcome to my weekly video blog, critical tips. This week, we’ll discuss cleanroom garments and specifically how to wash cleanroom garments. The two thoughts I’d like to share with you are the type of water you use and the detergent. The proper water and detergent are really going to affect the life expectancy of a cleanroom garment. If you use a detergent that is not appropriate in scope the life expectancy can be less than half of what it might be with the right detergent.

So let’s get back to the first point of topic, water. You want to use either deionized water, reverse osmosis water. The ionized water is a water that is charged it’s charged with ions in order to produce deionized water. You need to have a special water purification system and then the handling of deionized water requires all stainless steel fittings the benefit of deionized water or reverse osmosis water is this water is a charged water. Think of the water as a magnet and so deionized water is going to help release the surface tension that causes particles to cling to the garment so deionized reverse osmosis ultra pure water and a hot state is very important.

Let’s talk a little bit about the detergent you want to use. The number one a detergent that would be what we call non ionic non ionic means a detergent that’s going to be very low in NVR non-volatile residue. It’s important that you don’t introduce a detergent that’s high in ionic contamination because once ionic contamination is put on the garment it’s going to be hard to get them off. You’re gonna leave behind ionic contamination so you want to use a detergent that’s very low in ionic contamination.

The second thing that’s very important with your detergent is the pH level. The pH level for your detergent should be about base which is between 6.5 and 7.5. You do not want to have a detergent that is too alkaline nor do you want to have a detergent that’s too much on the basic side. What will happen the acidic side what will happen to either extreme it if your detergent is very alkaline. What is going to happen is the detergent is basically going to take the thread and the fiber and it’s going to break it down.

So just to summarize how to clean a cleanroom garment. The first most important thing is the water source make sure that the water is ultra pure and ultra hot. Then it’s very important that your detergent is a low ionic low sudsing pH boundless detergent. A detergent that has pH on either extremes is really going to break down your garment and you want to make sure you don’t break down your garment because the garment can visually appear to be effective but if you break it down you open up the weave, and then the filtration effect, effectiveness of the garment goes down. A properly laundered garment with a proper detergent and soap should exceed 100 life cycles of washing. An improperly washed garment using the wrong water and the wrong detergent can have a life expectancy of 50 Processing’s or less

Source: Valutek