Some info about the effectiveness of rinsing chemicals out of atomizers:
Basically atomizers are difficult things to rinse properly:
Using an Atomizer soaked in 1% fluorescein dye for 1 hour:
The below picture shows successive water rinses:
shake atty out hard, till no more liquid comes out, drop in 75ml water, swirl 5 mins.
On the face of it a quickly reducing level of dye,
the 4th flask from the left looks similar to water (5th from left)
So it's practically all been rinsed out ?, 'fraid not:
2nd from right flask is after 8 hours sitting, quite a lot more has diffused out.
Far right flask is after rinsing another atty hard for a minute under a tap,
with vigorous shake-outs (excessive rinsing right ?),
then left in water for 8 hours. Quite a bit of dye still there as well
Here's a more quantitative test, using pH to measure phosphoric acid.
Left 2 atomizers in 53% w/w phos.acid (H3PO4) overnight, then tried two rinsing methods,
the objective being to measure the 'hold up' of acid in the metal mesh & atty voids.
1
Did a 'under the tap' rinse, 1 min with fast water, turning atty all ways round,
with several vigorous shakes along the way.
This is what I'd call the damned obvious way of rinsing.
But Ive always left the rinsed atty overnight in a glass of water,
to diffuse out any residual acid, not sure everyone does.
2
A more controlled sequence of 'drain, shake hard, then 5 min soak in 50 ml water' steps.
Finally step left overnight
So how much acid is left in the atty ?
1:
After the tap rinse, and putting the atty into 50 ml water, the pH showed
that the equivalent of 0.002 ml of the acid was immediately released.
If the atty was say an easily rinsable tube that would
have been zero within seconds of the tap rinse start.
After leaving overnight an equivalent of 0.008 ml of the acid had been released,
that's getting up there a bit, thats 0.06 moles of acid that was still in the atty.
If the overnight soak hadn't been done, but the atty had just been drained & used
there would be enough retained acid to turn 0.3 ml of 36mg/ml juice from freebase
to salt-form nicotine. i.e. approx. your first 50 draws on the e-cig would be acid contaminated
(& effectively nack'd), probably more cos it would come out as a reducing curve
rather than a clean juice wash-though (if you see what I mean).
So overnight soak after rinse is a must!
2
What this shows is that its a sloooow diffusion of the acid into the soaking water,
All those tiny passages in the metal mesh probably, almost designed to be un-rinsable.
Further details in this spread sheet:
(for the other OCD people here
, &/or if anyone wants to check my calculations)
http://www.Exogenesis.co.uk/AtomiserRinsing.xls
How many people use the 'ice-machine cleaner' method for cleaning
atomizers, & are they doing effective rinses ?
(answers on a postcard).
Basically atomizers are difficult things to rinse properly:
Using an Atomizer soaked in 1% fluorescein dye for 1 hour:
The below picture shows successive water rinses:
shake atty out hard, till no more liquid comes out, drop in 75ml water, swirl 5 mins.
On the face of it a quickly reducing level of dye,
the 4th flask from the left looks similar to water (5th from left)
So it's practically all been rinsed out ?, 'fraid not:
2nd from right flask is after 8 hours sitting, quite a lot more has diffused out.
Far right flask is after rinsing another atty hard for a minute under a tap,
with vigorous shake-outs (excessive rinsing right ?),
then left in water for 8 hours. Quite a bit of dye still there as well
Here's a more quantitative test, using pH to measure phosphoric acid.
Left 2 atomizers in 53% w/w phos.acid (H3PO4) overnight, then tried two rinsing methods,
the objective being to measure the 'hold up' of acid in the metal mesh & atty voids.
1
Did a 'under the tap' rinse, 1 min with fast water, turning atty all ways round,
with several vigorous shakes along the way.
This is what I'd call the damned obvious way of rinsing.
But Ive always left the rinsed atty overnight in a glass of water,
to diffuse out any residual acid, not sure everyone does.
2
A more controlled sequence of 'drain, shake hard, then 5 min soak in 50 ml water' steps.
Finally step left overnight
So how much acid is left in the atty ?
1:
After the tap rinse, and putting the atty into 50 ml water, the pH showed
that the equivalent of 0.002 ml of the acid was immediately released.
If the atty was say an easily rinsable tube that would
have been zero within seconds of the tap rinse start.
After leaving overnight an equivalent of 0.008 ml of the acid had been released,
that's getting up there a bit, thats 0.06 moles of acid that was still in the atty.
If the overnight soak hadn't been done, but the atty had just been drained & used
there would be enough retained acid to turn 0.3 ml of 36mg/ml juice from freebase
to salt-form nicotine. i.e. approx. your first 50 draws on the e-cig would be acid contaminated
(& effectively nack'd), probably more cos it would come out as a reducing curve
rather than a clean juice wash-though (if you see what I mean).
So overnight soak after rinse is a must!
2
Code:
Rinse carry over volume (ml)
1 0.099
2 0.0041
3 0.0030
4 0.0016
5 0.0011
6 <0.0004
7 (almost zero)
8 (zero)
(15 hours soak) 9 [COLOR=red]0.0024[/COLOR]What this shows is that its a sloooow diffusion of the acid into the soaking water,
All those tiny passages in the metal mesh probably, almost designed to be un-rinsable.
Further details in this spread sheet:
(for the other OCD people here
, &/or if anyone wants to check my calculations)http://www.Exogenesis.co.uk/AtomiserRinsing.xls
How many people use the 'ice-machine cleaner' method for cleaning
atomizers, & are they doing effective rinses ?
(answers on a postcard).
