Cleaned kitchen hood baffles, but grease still dropping.

4 years ago

Hi all,

I had a problem of daily grease dropping from hood so decided to clean the baffles. I let it soak in mix of dawn/vinegar/water for a long time. Also put boiling water on them. Scrubbed with a kitchen scrub and toothbrush. Of course couldn't get 100% of gunk out but I thought it was let's say 80%+ there. But I see grease is again starting to forms drops that will fall and mess up stove top.

What is recommended?

Thank you!

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skuba
Original Author

4 years ago

Hi, thanks for the response. We actually never deep fried, and rarely fry food. Maybe cook steak on cast iron once a week, and that's it. Most of our food is cooked in the oven.

We didn't have this issue before, and now it drops everyday, even when we don't cook. Drops will form and fall on stove top.

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Comments (8)

zneret
4 years ago
Stop cooking oily food/deep frying? That certainly contributes.

It isn't so much the filters/baffles perhaps but oil vapour going up past the filter/baffle, accumulating somewhere up hood and dripping back down. Get a small step ladder, and stick your arms deep inside.

I like orange cleaner (or even Simple Green) for grease removal. Trying to make my own orange cleaner by steeping orange peel in 10% vinegar.
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I can only guess on this one because a true comparison would require both to be the same size and have the same achieved air flow rate. I would not expect anyone to have such a setup that could be compared. The baffle noise will be due to turbulence from air passing over the sharp edges of the baffle sheet metal. The mesh noise will be due to turbulence from air passing over the edges of the mesh holes. Although baffles have more metal surface than meshes filling the same area, I would argue that baffles have less edge length. This suggests that the mesh filters would generate more turbulence and thus be noisier. However, the size of the turbulence cells could be different in each case, and the sound frequency spectrum for one might be different than the other, leading to different perceptions of the noise relative to the actual achieved acoustic power. So, we are faced with a lot of qualitative fluid dynamics phenomena that don't lead to an obvious conclusion, so intuition prevails. In my estimation baffles will be no more noisy than meshes for the same air flow rate. I would also estimate that at moderate flow rates where the mesh induced noise isn't partly ultrasonic, the mesh noise will be louder. Also, relative to the italics above, equal fans do not yield equal flow rates, even with perfect MUA control. The losses in ducts of different diameter are not equal, and meshes will cause greater pressure loss, even when clean, than baffles for the same actual aperture area. (And most mesh filters do not cover as much area under their hood's boundaries as baffles usually do for the same hood boundaries.) So the flow rate achieved with meshes may be lower, but at the same time the air velocity at the mesh may be higher, and hence more noise is generated per unit area for less area. This is a non-trivial condition for which to have to estimate relative noise. kas
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kaseki
4 years ago
The hood interior and ducting, to the extent feasible, should be examined for grease buildup. Sometimes hoods are operated at a low flow rate sufficient to capture and contain modest grease generation, but not adequate for ensuring that the larger end of the grease particle spectrum is collected by the baffles. In this case grease can condense above the baffles, particularly when the ducting is exposed to cold air. Higher than minimal hood CFM is recommended in such as case -- after cleaning a far up as possible.
zneret
4 years ago
Could you explain why a lower flow rate results in grease landing past instead of on the baffles? What about grease traps where the vapour rises to the top of the hood and then has to travel down before pulled out by the fans?
kaseki
4 years ago
The baffles act in the same manner as the beloved-by-some Vent-a-Hood squirrel cage blower: They extract the larger end of the grease particle spectrum by centrifugal extraction. If this is not taking place because the air speed is too low as the air follows the N-path of half of any pair of baffles, then [greasier then desired] greasy air ends up above the baffles. After centrifugal extraction, the main methods of depositing grease are impingement (due to duct turbulence) and condensation (hood and duct is colder than the plume). Slow air velocities enhance condensation and high air velocities favor impingement.

I have never investigated hoods that act as grease traps by being, it seems from your description, one giant baffle pair. Sorry but it is too late tonight to start another quest.
skuba
Original Author
4 years ago
Not sure if it helps clarify anything. Mine is a 36” Kobe hood with 750 CFM.
Olychick
4 years ago
last modified: 4 years ago
Aren't those baffles dishwasher safe? I have a Kobe and I believe mine are. That might clean out what you couldn't get by hand washing.

eta: from the Kobe website:

http://www.koberangehoods.com/faq/

Also, is it possible you have some kind of leak from the outside, coming down the vent?
User
4 years ago
Is your ductwork insulated? If it’s not, you get condensation, which can carry even very fine grease particulates in the duct walls back down to the hood.

Cleaned kitchen hood baffles, but grease still dropping.

skuba
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zneret

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Cleaned kitchen hood baffles, but grease still dropping.

skubaOriginal Author

Comments (8)

zneret

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kaseki

zneret

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skuba
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