DR100 Car Steam Cleaner in the current pandemic situation is a necessary tool for every Car Wash Business. Customers are expecting a little more thorough cleaning than ever and Steam helps to disinfect the car and also remove bad smells from the car.

Car Steam Cleaners are very effective for :

• Car Interior
  • Dashboard
  • Central Console
  • Hand Rest
  • Leather Upholstery

• Exterior
  • Front Grill
  • Door Sills
  • Windshield
  • Entire Car Body
  • Wheels

As you see almost the entire car can be washed using a Steam Cleaner, however, it depends on the type of steam you use for cleaning. There are two types of Steam -

• Dry Steam
• Wet Steam - Saturated Steam

Understanding Steam

Before understanding the types of steam, you need to understand what is steam and how it is generated. Steam is nothing new to you, infact it is one for the first wonders of a child - seeing water evaporate from her porridge. Everybody has used steam in some on the other way. Either it may be for medical use or for fun science project.

So what makes the Steam used for car cleaning different than the steam that you have seen earlier?

Answer - Pressure

A Steam Iron, or, even for that matter a pressure cooker works at 10% to 20% high pressure than the atmospheric pressure. Though this is good enough  for those applications but for cleaning applications you require a pressure which would be able to perform the following functions :

1. Loosening the Dirt
2. Elevating the temperature a little bit for better cleaning
3. Pushing the dirt from the place it dried/settled

A Car Steam Cleaner requires a much higher pressure to accomplish the above tasks. We don't want a steam nozzle just to direct steam towards the dirt, we want a steam nozzle to blast steam and remove the dirt whichever is in its way.

So, here we are not just talking about 10% or 20% higher pressure than atmospheric pressure we are talking about a massive 500% to 1000% high pressure. A typical Steam Cleaner used for car cleaning would at least have a steam pressure of 5 bar ( 72 psi) . Since the steam stops being usable for car cleaning below 5 bar, a steam cleaner should elevate the pressure to more than 5 bar.  KKE [|LINK,4481,{DR110 Steam Cleaner}|], [|LINK,4737,{DR112 Steam Cleaner}|] and [|LINK,4865,{DR118 Steam Cleaner }|] steam cleaner have a steam pressure of 10 bar (144 psi).

If you look at the above graph, you will understand, the more the temperature the water is heated to, the higher the pressure of the steam. To give you an idea, for the steam to reach 10 bar pressure, you need to heat the water to almost 180 deg C (356 deg F). While now you learn about the steam temperature, we are sure that the following question would be obvious in your mind.

Will the Steam Temperature damage British Car Paint or Plastic Parts?

The answer is No. The reason being, while the water needs to be heated up to 180 degrees for it to create a steam pressure of 10 bar, the steam is delivered around 80 - 90 degrees depending upon the type of steam you are using and the type of nozzle you are using.

NOZZLE Expansion Image

The high-pressure steam expands from a pressure of 10 bar to atmospheric pressure. When this happens any pressurised gas cools down due to conversion from Potential Energy to Kinetic Energy. This helps the steam at 180 deg C to cool down to safe limit. Smaller the nozzle orifice, more it would cool the steam down.

Car Steam Cleaner Parts

Any pressurised equipment needs to have Sensors and Instrumentation to make it safe to operate in Automatic Mode. Sensors are like senses to the microcontroller as what sight, touch, sound are to our brain. The Temperature, Pressure, Water level sensors send signals to the microcontroller which make decisions and switches on various pumps and heaters to give you a continuous supply of steam.

STEAM CLEANER COMPONENTS

Now that you have understood the various parts and intricacies of Steam Cleaner, lets head towards understanding the Types of Steam uses for car Cleaning.

Types of Steam

Dry Steam

As the name suggests, the steam is dry i.e. unsaturated. This kind of steam is used in cleaning area which has electronics and moisture can damage the components. Car Interior like Dashboard, Music System, Central console are some of these areas. Dry steam just moisturises the dirt to make it remove easily.

Wet Steam

Wet steam on the other hand is a saturated steam and has high moisture level. Since the density of wet steam is much higher than dry steam, it has greater momentum which helps in better cleaning. Wet steam is generally used for cleaning the exterior of the car. Wet steam is very effective in cleaning dirty areas like wheels and heavily soiled car parts.

Advantages of Using Steam for Car Cleaning

• Consumes very less water for cleaning one car
• Can also be used for Interior cleaning of car
• Sanitizes the car surface
• Consumes less electric power
• No dripping of water, hence no drainage issues
• Can be used inside a closed room

Steam Cleaners from KKE