Paul Downes
Member
- Messages
- 959
- Location
- Westphalia, Michigan
We probably have all heard of the issue of spontaneous combustion and oily rags. Aside from the best ways to deal with them, mainly burning them as soon as you can after creating them. I have a bit of a problem in that I have a business that generates large quantities of them daily. I use them to clean deep fryers all day long. I also have heat resistant cloth gloves and sleeves that are fairly oil soaked by the end of the week, and then washed and re-used.
So my question is how to deal with the gloves and not burn down my shop or service vans. I think the rags require outside air, namely oxygen in order for the oil to oxidize and generate heat. So I'm thinking that I will keep the gloves in Zip Loc bags to keep the air away from the gloves. Do you folks think this would be a good solution? I don't know enough about the chemistry going on here to be completely at ease that simply denying air will keep stuff from going up in smoke.
So my question is how to deal with the gloves and not burn down my shop or service vans. I think the rags require outside air, namely oxygen in order for the oil to oxidize and generate heat. So I'm thinking that I will keep the gloves in Zip Loc bags to keep the air away from the gloves. Do you folks think this would be a good solution? I don't know enough about the chemistry going on here to be completely at ease that simply denying air will keep stuff from going up in smoke.