5 Ways to Clean Fine Metals with Lemon Juice (2024)

FAQs

How do you clean metal with lemon juice? ›

Clean slightly tarnished brass or copper with half a lemon or lime dipped in salt. The salt works the acid from the lemons or limes deep into the tarnish and scrubs away the bits of dirt and grime.

Try mixing lemon juice with a little vinegar to make the solution a little stronger if needed. Not only will you be rust-free, but whatever you are cleaning will have a fresh citrus scent!

Thanks to a lemon's powerful natural acid, it can quickly remove heat stains and streaks from stainless steel. To do this, simply grab a cleaning cloth and soak it with freshly squeezed lemon juice. Then, scrub your item with the cloth until all of the marks have vanished.

Simply place the items in a pan, add lemon, apple peels, or rhubarb stalks and bring to the boil briefly. Leave the item in the hot water for a while and then marvel at the amazing cleaning effect! Aluminum is cleaned with vinegar or vinegar essence in the same way it's cleaned using acidic fruit.

Lemon juice is acidic in nature as it contains citric acid. Citric acid has the tendency to react with iron in order to form iron oxide as well as hydrogen gas.

Lemons are great in the removal of food stains from your favorite Tupperware and food storage containers. Simply squeeze some lemon juice into the container and add a pinch of baking soda. If you are using a lemon versus bottled juice, work the lemon as a sponge or cleaning cloth on the surface.

But lemon juice is not safe to use on all surfaces and fabrics and, critically, it should never be mixed with chlorine bleach, nor with products that contain bleach, as the combination creates dangerous toxic fumes.

Regular dish soap and warm water will clean off any of the surface dirt or grime. After that, rub a lemon over the surface to restore the shine. A soft cloth soaked in white vinegar will also do the trick! Just make sure you rinse the vinegar off with some warm water when you're done.

Additionally, it's perfectly safe for lemon water! Even acidic beverages are safe to use in stainless steel bottles (unless in very high heat and even then it's mostly a concern for people with nickel allergies).

Much like brass cleaners, chemical rust removers can be found in any hardware store. But many household cleaning items—like baking soda, lemon juice, vinegar, and even soda—can do the trick.

Does lemon juice react with aluminum? ›

Leaching in case of lemon juice was moderate (max 14.4 ppm). Heating definitely increased the rate of dissolution. At room temperature, the rate of leaching was modest. Collectively, the results show that aluminum does dissolve in acidic foods and heating accelerates the process of dissolution.

Vinegar and Baking Soda: Mix equal parts of white vinegar and baking soda to create a paste. Apply the paste onto the oxidized metal and let it sit for a few hours. Scrub the metal gently with a soft-bristled brush, then rinse with water.

Lemon juice, like vinegar, is mildly acidic. Acids can be used as stain removers by adding a charge to a stain's molecules, which then become attracted to the charges in water molecules. This gives the stains a light tug that loosens them enough to be rinsed away in water.

A 50-50 solution of distilled white vinegar and water is an effective cleaner for most tarnished metals. You can also use a paste of 1 cup of vinegar, 1 ½ cups of flour, and 1 teaspoon of salt to coat the item and then buff it off with a soft cloth.

Let the lemon juice mixture sit on the tool for between 30 minutes and 2 hours. Don't let it go too long (like overnight) because the water in the lemon juice will start forming new rust once it's penetrated down to good steel. After soaking, use your abrasive pad in circular motions again to knock any loose rust free.