Does Apple Cider Vinegar Help with Rust?

If you have a rust stain on your clothes or in your sink, you should not lose your peace over the situation if you have apple cider vinegar around. It is one of those you should consider for rust but of the truth, does apple cider vinegar help with rust?

Yes, apple cider vinegar helps get rid of rust. It works in two ways: first, by softening the rusty metal. Second, the acidity in the vinegar reacts with the rust and turns it into iron acetate, a salt-like substance that is easily washed away.

Apple Cider Vinegar is a natural way to remove corrosion from metals. It can be used to clean rust off chrome appliances, bikes, other forms of transportation, and just about anything around your home that has rusted hardware.

However, apple cider vinegar will not prevent rust from returning to previously rusted surfaces. So, you should take up a measure to prevent rust from forming all over again.

What is Apple Cider Vinegar?

Vinegar is a solution of 5-8% volume of acetic acid and trace compounds with the possible inclusion of flavoring. The acetic acid, which is more like the framework of the solution, is produced by a yeast-induced double fermentation of simple sugars, which is converted to ethanol and then to acetic acid with the aid of acetic acid bacteria.

What is Apple Cider Vinegar

White vinegar is the simplest form of vinegar because it solely contains the primary compound of its solution (4-7% acetic acid) and the rest is water. People would use it for cleaning, cooking, gardening in the house, and it has medical applications too. White vinegar can also be used to remove rust but apple cider vinegar is even better at doing the job.

Apple cider vinegar is a vinegar solution made from fermented apple juice; yeast in juice from crushed apples induces fermentation, turning the sugar in the juice into alcohol, which is further converted into acetic acid (the main active compound in vinegar) by adding bacteria.

How to Remove Rust with Cider Vinegar?

There are a few conventional methods out there that can help you with removing the rust settling on your metallic items or tools; they are certified and guaranteed. But perhaps you don’t have the luxury of time to go shopping for rust removing solutions prepared in aerosol cans and the likes, are there other ways to remove rust from your metals? Should you have to put up with rusted objects because of shopping constraints?

How to Remove Rust with Cider Vinegar

The good news is several household items can serve as a makeshift or improvised measure for removing rust, one of them being apple cider vinegar. The vinegar reacts with the rust and dissolves it.

In a container containing the cider vinegar solution, submerge your rusty metal object into it for a couple of hours; then, remove it and simply wipe it to remove the rust. Supposing the object you want to clean is too large for any available container, you can evenly pour vinegar over the surface of the object and leave it for a while to do its job. An alternative means would be to use a cloth you have soaked in vinegar to wipe the object clean.

There are other ways to use apple cider vinegar to remove rust other than soaking the object in the solution. You can dip a piece of aluminum foil in vinegar and use it to wipe the rust off the metal. It is, however, noteworthy that while vinegar is generally effective in removing rust, it’s a relatively mild solution. More times than not, you may need to soak the metal in the solution for a long time, say overnight or for 24 hours. The more preferred way to remove the rust from your metal using apple cider vinegar is to use a piece of aluminum foil dipped in vinegar to scrape the rust away after removing the submerged metal from the solution.

There’s yet one more way to make use of vinegar in removing rust from your tools, and that’s by using a mixture of vinegar with some other wonderful cleaning agents. Salt, baking soda, and vinegar are excellent cleaning agents, individually, but when mixed, they form an extremely effective rust remover.

The mixing and usage are careful measured processes that begin with adding ½ cup of salt to ½ gallon of vinegar in a container, preferably plastic. Then, submerge your rusty item into the solution and leave it in there for about 12 hours.

The next move is to empty the container of the mixed solution of salt and vinegar. Rinse the metal items and return them into the container into which you will then fill with ½ gallon of fresh water and ½ cup of baking soda. This is done to neutralize any remaining vinegar that may be trapped in the crevices of the metal. After leaving the items in the solution for 10 minutes, rinse them in warm water and dry them afterward.

This mixture method of using vinegar to remove rust may take longer than the other methods but it’s ideal if you are looking at cleaning a collection of items, such as kitchen utensils.

Last Words

Acids are known to be great rust remover; hence, the quality of vinegar to effectively remove rust due to acetic acid as its active ingredient. Apple cider vinegar helps with removing rust; all you need to do is submerge the rusty metal in a container of the solution, shake the container to ensure the vinegar reaches all parts of the tool, leave the item in the solution for a day and the rest is a happy story from there onward. Now, you can get back to enjoying that hobby.

Evan Cooper

Evan Cooper

Hi, I’m Evan Cooper, the founder and an editor of this site, Doesitrust. I’m a chemical engineer and working in a rust-eliminating paint manufacturing company. Besides this profession, I’m a researcher and blogger.

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