On Sun, 28 Sep 2008 19:06:09 -0700, in rec.crafts.jewelry "Triple"
wrote:

Does anyone have any experience with ultrasonic jewelry cleaners that just
use tap water? I'd love to be good the environment and not use chemicals if
I can. But I don't want to buy something that doesn't work and end up
tossing into a landfill. Any advice would be appreciated.

Ultrasonic cleaners may vary from brand to brand in their power levels, their
various convenience features, and to a degree, in the exact frequency they
operate at. But they are basically all the same type of action, so the nature
of use of one, will be about the same as for others, even if some are faster or
more aggresive than others. And in essence, they are scrub brushes. They work
by causing the formation and collapse of myriads of tiny bubbles of water vapor
(an effect called cavitation), with the formation and collapse of the bubbles
occuring at very high speeds. That creates a scrubbing action. Whether that
action has any effect, however, depends on the fluid. The fluid must be able
to transmit the ultrasonic sound energy for the cavitation to occur efficiently.
And then, the degree to which the scrubbing cleans something depends on how well
the fluid interacts with the contaminant. Generally, some degree of soluability
or for the contaminant to be "wetted" or broken up by the fluid is needed for
much of anything to happen. That often means some sort of detergent action.
This is no different from anything else you clean. If you're trying to clean up
sugar or salt crystals, then plain water will do just fine, as it will do for
anything else that is water soluable. If you've got grease, though, then you
can scrub with plain water all you like, but it won't come clean without some
surfactant or detergent action. Most of the time, when cleaning jewelry, you're
trying to remove a mix of oils, soaps, dead skin, lotions, and whatever other
gunks may have packed into the jewelry over time. Usually this needs some sort
of cleaning agent beyond just water.

However, there are many cleaning agents around which are properly formulated to
be environmentally friendly. Simple green, for example, is a general purpose
cleaning agent sold for household cleaning. It works fine in an ultrasonic
cleaner. Maybe not quite as fast as some of the commercial cleaners, but well
enough. Adding just a little ammonia is also probably not a big no-no
environmentally, and will help considerably. Try to avoid cleaning agents
(like soap) that form suds. That will get in the way in an ultrasonic, but
other than that, there are many environmentally friendly cleaning agents you can
use. You don't need to use nasty stuff. In fact, some of the commercially
made ultrasonic cleaning solutions are also made to be fully biodegradable and
are completely harmless in the waste water stream. Just because it's something
more than plain water does not mean it has to be harmful or to be avoided.
Remember that the word "chemical" is just that, a word. Being able to call
something a chemical has no environmental meaning. Water, for example, is
dihydrogen monoxide, if you like. Sounds pretty nasty to be putting into the
environment, doesn't it. And some of the totally naturally occuring things that
not only are, but should be, in a normal bit of healthy pond water will have
chemical names that are truly unpronouncable. Again, don't let the chemical
nomenclature frighten you. Simply look for products that honestly can claim to
be environmentally friendly, and you'll be fine. No doubt you already have some
such products around the house.

Peter