Grease stains

Jonathan Ellis

Jonathan Ellis

moderator
Is there any way to completely remove grease stains on concrete and or asphault? Can they be removed or just have a clean stain?
 
Well asphalt i dont think so but i maybe wrong. On concrete i think sodium hydroxide and hot water will get it off. Rust stains should come off with some oxalic acid
 
A hydrofluoric / sulfuric acid will take 95% of the stain out, but you have to treat the whole pad or you end up with white spots.
 
Jonathan Ellis said:
use muratic acid? What is the best application process for this?
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Jonathan,

Be real careful using muriatic on concrete. You can etch the concrete or be left with perm. stains if you aren't careful. If you do use muriatic, please make sure you dilute it to start with. Meaning start with a good dillution of water, and test, don't ever use it straight, it's very strong stuff. I've used muriatic on brick at 4 to 1 if I remember correctly, but it was for removing mortar tags.
I would go with Oxalic acid for rust removal on concrete and a dilution of sodium hydroxide for degreasing concrete. It's hard to give you exact dilution ratios, it just depends on what you are cleaning.
I would recommend, if you get a job where you need to clean something and you're unsure, take some digital pictures, then post them here, and people can give you a hand, that's what I've done in the past years.
 
Ditto what John from Superior just said. We use Muratic Acid alot on concrete work and we "step on it" pretty hard meaning that we use very little chems and alot of H20.

I suggest playing around with your ratios a bit. Again as John mentioned, if you are not careful you could and will etch the concrete by removing the "cream" layer on most concrete surfaces thus exposing what we call the aggregate.
 
When using acidic cleaners, test patches are the name of the game. Always slow down and take your time at first. Do a small area and inspect the results before going crazy on the whole project. All concrete is not the same and some can etch very easily.
 
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