Amario132 I can e-mail you a procedure for citric acid. E-mail me at renalbuy@aol.com and i will get it to you.

Why would anyone use Citric Acid?? Thats crazy talk. Seriously, your reinventing the wheel here. 10+ years in Dialysis, and every clinic I have ever been to just uses Vinegar for both Acid and Bicarb wands. Vinegar is NOT a disinfective. Its just used to breakdown the acetate and bicarbonate prior to Heat DISINFECTion.

vinegar is used to prevent precipitate from bicarb. for machine maintenance, you should follow manufactures rec's. citric acid is for better prevention of precipatate and is recommeded about 1 time a week, but not everyone does this, because the benefits are debatable. as for wands, rinse them with water and bleach disinfect them. if you use acid, it won't get to the bicarb if your bicarb pump is prior to the acid pump, which is our case. must be some confusion in this thread.

Reasons...
1. Citric acid is more effective than vinegar.
2. Citric acid is cheaper than vinegar.
3. Citric acid requires less volume thus decreasing its cost even further.
4. Citric acid is available in powder form so shipping is cheaper and storage space is minimal.

The purpose of using either vinegar or citric acid is to dissolve calcium carbonate that may have developed in the machine.

Chuck

Citric acid combined with heat does both descaling and disinfection at the same time.
I have used both citric and vinegar in my 26 years of experience and in my opinion vinegar is better. Citric can leave a sticky residue plus it has to be mixed by staff thus introducing the human error factor.