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Marine parts cleaning and MRO…

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DEFENCE - Truck Repair Service

…that handles what the sea throws at you

Water-based industrial cleaning for ship engines, heat exchangers, gearboxes, turbochargers and more. Because grease, salt, and carbon deposits wait for no maintenance window.

Do these cleaning challenges in marine maintenance look familiar?

Marine MRO is not for the faint-hearted. Whether you operate a shipyard, run a remanufacturing workshop for marine engines, or manage on-vessel maintenance, the cleaning challenges are predictable, repetitive, and expensive if left unaddressed.

Issues like:

  • Heavy carbon, grease and salt deposits on engine components that resist standard degreasers and demand repeated wash cycles.
  • Manual scrubbing of cylinder heads, crankcases, and gearbox housings that ties up skilled technicians for hours.
  • Heat exchangers fouled with scale and deposits, reducing thermal efficiency and shortening equipment life.
  • Solvent-based or diesel-based cleaning that creates health hazards in confined engine rooms and generates significant hazardous waste.
  • Short bath lifetimes, frequent chemical changes, and a cupboard full of single-purpose products.

None of these move your vessel, hit your maintenance schedule, or make your HSE manager happy.

Water-based marine industrial cleaning.
One solution.

We’ve spent nearly 40 years proving that water-based industrial cleaners outperform solvent and diesel-based alternatives. In marine maintenance, the argument is even more compelling. Enclosed engine rooms, strict port regulations, and complex alloy surfaces make the switch to professional aqueous cleaning chemistry a matter of both performance and compliance.

DST-DEGREEZ is formulated to cut through the contamination marine engineers deal with every day. It works on all metal types commonly found in marine applications, including steel, aluminium, copper-nickel alloys, and titanium, and it does so at lower operating temperatures.
That matters. Lower temperature means lower energy cost. And in a wash bath running continuously through a remanufacturing shift, that saving adds up faster than barnacles on a slow tanker.

I want to learn more about the solution

We help you clean:

We support your cleaning across the full range of marine engine room components. These include:

  • Cylinder heads — carbon and combustion deposit removal for remanufacturing and overhaul.
  • Crankcase and cylinder blocks — heavy-duty degreasing before inspection and reassembly.
  • Turbochargers and charge air coolers — internal and external cleaning without full component disassembly.
  • Diesel engine cooling systems — descaling and deposit removal from titanium plates and tube bundles.
  • Heat exchangers (finned and tube type) — both external air-side and internal tube-side cleaning to restore heat transfer efficiency.
  • Gearbox casings and speed reducer housings — degreasing prior to inspection, repair, or recoating.
  • Pump casings — cleaning of valve seats, housings, and impellers.
  • Copper and copper-nickel tubes — internal fouling and scale removal using dipping or recirculation methods.

Compatible with ultrasonic cleaning systems, immersion tanks, spray wash cabinets, and manual application. If you have a wash process, we can optimise it.

Get a free cleaning process check

Why the investment pays off

Our solution is not the cheapest product on the shelf. It is the most cost-effective cleaning solution when you look at the full picture: energy, bath life, wastewater handling, labour, and rework. Here is what our marine and industrial customers typically achieve:

3 X

Bath life time
increase

54 %

Energy
cost savings

56 %

Waste-water
cost reduction

37 %

Man hour
cost reduction

Add to this that DST-DEGREEZ achieved a 97.6% biodegradability score in independent OECD 302B testing. That is not just something we claim. It is a test result.

Try our savings calculator

Proof from other marine MROs

Pure Performance keeps your maintenance process stable

For more than 35 years, we have worked with our Pure Performance concept. It is not a slogan. It is a structured process for implementing and maintaining industrial cleaning in your operation.

Here is what it looks like in practice:

We evaluate your current cleaning process and identify where time, energy, and chemistry can be optimised

We select and test the right product for your specific contamination types and metal surfaces.

We support the conversion from your current chemistry to DST-CHEMICALS products.

 We provide ongoing bath monitoring, optimisation, and technical support as part of the standard service.

We train your team so that baths are maintained correctly between service visits.

The result is a cleaning process that runs quietly in the background while your team focuses on the actual maintenance work. No surprises. Just clean parts on schedule.

Get in touch with our experts today

Frequently asked questions
about marine parts cleaning

What is the best degreaser for marine engine components?

Water-based industrial degreasers such as DST-DEGREEZ are increasingly preferred for marine engine cleaning. They remove grease, oil, carbon deposits, and salt contamination from steel, aluminium, copper-nickel alloys, and titanium without the health hazards associated with solvent or diesel-based alternatives. They are compatible with immersion, ultrasonic, and spray wash systems.

Can water-based cleaners replace diesel or solvent cleaning in marine MRO?

Yes. Water-based industrial cleaners have replaced diesel and solvent cleaning in marine maintenance operations across Europe. The key advantages are equivalent or superior cleaning performance, significantly lower environmental and health impact, and a measurably lower total cost of ownership when bath life, energy, and wastewater handling are included in the comparison.

Read more about what solvent cleaning is right here.

How do you clean a marine heat exchanger without removing it?

Finned heat exchangers can be cleaned externally by spraying the aluminium fins with an aqueous cleaner to remove dirt and oil, with a drain arrangement for recovery. For tube-side internal cleaning, a recirculation method circulates the cleaning solution through the tubes without full disassembly. This restores heat transfer efficiency and reduces pressure drop without taking the equipment fully offline.

What is the total cost of ownership (TCO) in marine cleaning?

TCO in marine cleaning refers to the full operating cost of your cleaning chemistry over time, including product cost, energy consumption (wash bath temperature), wastewater disposal, bath change frequency, labour for manual rework, and consumables. A product with a higher unit price but a longer bath lifetime, lower operating temperature, and fewer required ancillary products typically delivers a significantly lower TCO.
Read more about TCO in industrial cleaning here.

Is water-based industrial cleaning safe for use in enclosed engine rooms?

Water-based industrial cleaners do not emit the harmful vapours associated with solvent or diesel cleaning, making them substantially safer for use in confined spaces such as marine engine rooms. Proper ventilation is still recommended, and your supplier should provide full Safety Data Sheets and operator guidance as a matter of course.

How often does a wash bath need to be changed in marine parts cleaning?

Bath lifetime depends on contamination load, product concentration, and maintenance practices. With DST-DEGREEZ and regular bath monitoring under the Pure Performance 365 service, customers typically achieve bath lifetimes three times longer than with conventional cleaning chemistry. Longer bath life means less downtime, less wastewater disposal cost, and less chemical handling by your team.

What marine components can be cleaned with aqueous degreasers?

Aqueous industrial degreasers are suitable for most metal components found in marine maintenance, including cylinder heads, crankcase and cylinder blocks, turbochargers, charge air coolers, heat exchangers, gearbox housings, pump casings, and copper-nickel tube bundles. Compatibility should always be verified for sensitive alloys or coated surfaces, which is part of the process evaluation DST-CHEMICALS carries out before any conversion.

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