The “Cola” Method Taken to Another Level That Works

[exogenesis]

...I estimate 20% to be cola equivalent so the 35% seems a good bet, with heat. Would be much more suitable for general use too...
The copper wires are coated in enamel (mine are reddish) - perhaps that accounts for the discoloring, which hence is not important.

No way is Cola 20% phos.acid, I was amazed when that was first posted, it would burn your guts!
Best search value - approx 500mg to 1g per litre = 0.05 to 0.1%
The stripped part of the copper wires tarnished with 85%, the plastic insulation was apparently untouched.

...Mine (the PG one) is still not completely clean after 2-1/2 days soaking. A friend of mine gave me his VG one, and it cleaned up in 24 hours...

This diffence between VG & PG 'carbon' is very interesting.
Wonder if we can quantify this with the pure chemicals.

 

[kinabaloo]

according to pH tables it is equivalent to 20% phosphoric acid in water, although it is often declared as 2.5% w/v. I guess the pH table is wrong, or the pH, which is said to be 2.75.

I didn't mean 20% w/v of course, but in pH terms equivaent to 20% strength in terms of diluting the 75% acid solution. Still seems wrong though as i said the first time mentioned this.

edit (correction): I think the mistake was in the pH table or my extraction from it.
So: what seems correct is : cola : 0.75% phosphoric acid; pH 2.75 - 3.0

 

[kinabaloo]

http://www.wikihow.com/Make-OpenCola

Seems you are right: about 0.75% phosphoric acid and pH around 2.75 - 3.0

So the question is: why does a 100x stronger solution not work much much better or faster, given that many people reported good results using only cola after just a one night soak.

Perhaps we are not on the right road with the phosphoric acid.

If the deposit was say, calcium carbonate, one would expect it to be gone in seconds with 75% phosphoric acid. So either the deposit is not inorganic minerals and oxides after all (as I have suggested it was) or it has become hardened (as I also previously suggested was possible). If the deposits are actually actually mostly organic, would any acid really be the best approach?

Then again, Sun found that the desosits were completely reacted away, eventually. It is a curious situation ...

 

[exogenesis]

er, you missed out the last step on that recipe:
1/2 fl.oz. phos.acid solution added per gallon of syrup
I think this is diluted a further 1/5 (same page) ---> 0.06%

Wikipedia has pH of phos.acid:
pH1.62 for 0.1M (1%)
pH2.25 for 0.01M (0.1%)
pH3.05 for 0.001M (0.01%)

edit: you got there just before I did
I guess it's not just a question of potential acid (un-ionized acid),
but of the effective strength of the actual acidity (low pH),
But I still think there more to the effectiveness of say 25/35% phos acid than that implies.

Also the effect of a cola soak has been reported as 'temporary' i.e. it only cleans
the surface gunk, not deep down, so the burnt flavour can fairly quickly re-appear.

 

[kinabaloo]

After all, the point of the IceMaker cleaner would be do dissolve hard water deposits.

I think the 'burnt flavor' is another oddity, or perhaps not, but distraction perhaps. Since I ditched tobacco flavor juices, I never get the burnt flavor, under any conditions, old atomiser (oldish and never used with tobacco flavors) or run dry.

I have tried to think of some possible organic breakdown products that are not carbon, but they are all gases! So perhpa sthe dry residues are not broken down much and are somehow hardened over time with the heat - but that still doesn't explain why the acid does react away the deposit. One would expect the acid to reduce organic deposits to carbon, that would then be left behind.

For now I will stick with my best guess as: the deposits are hardened inorganic minerals with bits of dry deopsits mixed in.

 

[exogenesis]

I've got the burnt tasting atomizers with cherry, tobacco and home-brew loranne flavours (with VG),
(cinnamon, apple, pinacolada etc).
Perhaps it depends on how, & how often the atomizer is used?

For me it's the reason for cleaning my atomizers.

Here's an effective organic residue cleaner:
Piranha solution - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

This second and far more interesting process can be understood as the sulfuric-acid boosted conversion of hydrogen peroxide from a relatively mild oxidizing agent into one sufficiently aggressive to dissolve elemental carbon, a material that is notoriously resistant to room temperature aqueous reactions

But after my sulphuric acid tests I think it's probably not recommended 8-o

 

[kinabaloo]

To describe H2O2 as a 'mild' oxidizing agent is astonishing. A full asbestos suit would be required to work with that piranha stuff !

Will it eat the coil and plastic parts too??

Be very very careful when you try this!

An interesting find - thanks

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nKQIFZAuvvI&feature=related

 

[exogenesis]

I'm getting that suit right now, or maybe not.
But I might, very very carefully, try a mixture of phos.acid & H2O2,
it might have the same effect, without dissolving the mesh (maybe).

edit:
well conc. sulphuric acid didn't dissolve the nichrome, but may have
significantly weakened the solder/nichrome join point,
but mainly it screwed-up the steel wick mesh big time.

 

[Tin Cup]

Wow, this is getting into some SERIOUS research!

I'm pretty sure all of you know this, but I'm gonna throw it out here anyway...

I've read between the lines on some of these posts, and there are some folks (while trying to be helpful), that don't fully understand what we're trying to overcome. They give the atomizer a good bath in something, and Shazamm! - the atomizer works great again.

What's probably happening in some cases is that the atomizer was only flooded, and cleaning it out in most anything would have helped. So, not all of the reports claiming that "this works" are really dealing with the issue at hand...

As for the PG/VG thing, I think (from very limited experience with VG) that VG needs a much lower temperature to vaporize than PG. Maybe one of you chemists can prove/disprove that? Could this be part of the reason it may/may not clean easier?

I'm only guessing here, but then I'm only doing what I'm good at - I'm much better at questions than answers.

TC

 

[Sun Vaporer]

Wow, this is getting into some SERIOUS research!

I'm pretty sure all of you know this, but I'm gonna throw it out here anyway...

I've read between the lines on some of these posts, and there are some folks (while trying to be helpful), that don't fully understand what we're trying to overcome. They give the atomizer a good bath in something, and Shazamm! - the atomizer works great again.

What's probably happening in some cases is that the atomizer was only flooded, and cleaning it out in most anything would have helped. So, not all of the reports claiming that "this works" are really dealing with the issue at hand...

As for the PG/VG thing, I think (from very limited experience with VG) that VG needs a much lower temperature to vaporize than PG. Maybe one of you chemists can prove/disprove that? Could this be part of the reason it may/may not clean easier?

I'm only guessing here, but then I'm only doing what I'm good at - I'm much better at questions than answers.

TC

Tin Cup--this is in fact way over most of our heads here. Also it is very serious research to be left only to those who know what they are doing ---So Please people, remember that this just that: experimenting and should not be tried by the general pubic here as it is dangerous.

As for your theory about the atomizer simply being cleared from flooding in some reports---I would concur with that 100% as that is in fact the issue many times. With respect to VG being more readily cleaned--I suspect you are correct. I am getting some used PG atomizers to see if they are in fact harder to clean with respect to the coil as compared to VG and will report when I know---Sun

 

[exogenesis]

Nice vid kinabaloo, looks like fun all on it's own (from a distance).

Think you've got a good point Tin Cup,
there must be an almost infinite variation in atomizer-gunk-state in A-space (sorry Mr Pratchett),
so each report of success should take into account the initial state rather than just the result, but we don't have that always.
This is why I was trying to get a worst-case scenario when I originally H2O2 tested,
but I'm not sure I did.

The evaporation (& 'burning' ?) of VG at a lower temp. could be significant.

Please keep asking the questions , it's the only way we learn
(apart from blowing ourselves up)

edit: nice confirmation SunV, would be interesting if you can get some PG/VG correlation.

 

[Di]

please be careful guys

some of you have become friends to me,
don't want to lose any of you......
the dangers are really not worth it
at the cost of 2.50 per week attomizer cost.........

Di .......

 

[kinabaloo]

TinCup - I more or less agree about the almost miraculous clean experiences; but not flooding exactly - i'd say gummed up, evaporated super-concentrated gum like liquid or dry deposits in the mesh wick. Not the hardened stuff we see build up on the coil over time.

Actually VG has the (much) higher boiling point
BP of PG : 188 C VG : 290 C

So, if anything, VG atomizers I would expect to get to higher average temperatures and maybe therefore the deposits becoming harder (more solid), and thereby more difficult to clean; conjecture though, perhaps something else at work. I think the nature of the dry deposits is key, not whether PG or VG.

Exogenesis: After more research on decomposition of VG i don't believe there is a signifant problem; the reasoning i will write up some time. I doubt there is any acrolein produced, but I did eventually remember reasearch finding that it is produced in certain types of cooking - french fries, barbecues being among them. One path is by production of free glycols from heated fats, and a second from charring of carbohydrates.

Only the minutest amount is dangerous (2 parts per million) so we need to consider every possibility carefully - what happens if ... coil is gunked up, voltage is raised, coil becomes thinner with age, water fraction of juice evaporates, etc etc. Also, the method used to produce it (don't try this) suugests some care is needed to make sure there is nothing in the juice equivalent to the active part of sodium bisulphate that might react similarly with glycerine.

"An acrolein is in organic chemistry, acrolein or propenal is the simplest unsaturated aldehyde.
Acrolein is described as having a piercing, disagreeable, acrid smell similar to that of burning fat. Skin exposure to acrolein causes serious damage. Acrolein concentrations of 2 ppm are immediately dangerous to life. Acrolein may be easily produced by the action of approximately 1 part sodium bisulfate on 3 parts glycerine by weight."
source: http://wiki.answers.com/Q/What_is_acrolein

more on this topic another time.

 

[Tin Cup]

TinCup - I more or less agree about the almost miraculous clean experiences; but not flooding exactly - i'd say gummed up, evaporated super-concentrated gum like liquid or dry deposits in the mesh wick.

Actually VG has the (much) higher boiling point
BP of PG : 188 C VG : 290 C

That's amazing! I've vaped VG in an atomizer that won't vaporize PG, and it "smokes" like a brand new atomizer.

Geez, Lousie... I think I'm gonna leave this to you experts.

TC

 

[kinabaloo]

TinCup - that is a bit strange. But in reality a VG juice boils off the coil at a lower temperature because it is mixed with water which in a flash heating the two will go together at a lower temperature. Even 'pure' VG will likely be 20% water as it is highly hydroscopic; only if heated slowly will there be fractional distillation.

 

[Sun Vaporer]

TinCup - that is a bit strange. But in reality a VG juice boils off the coil at a lower temperature because it is mixed with water which in a flash heating the two will go together at a lower temperature.

Kinabaloo--this is very informative. I am very interested to see how the PG v. VG works out. I have a friend vaping like crazy on an new RN4072 so we will soon see. It does not take to many days for a residual build up to occur. I had an RN4072 go cold after 4 days and when I took it apart, the coil was nasty so we shall see. It is day 3 with the new one using strictly PG--what do you think is a fair amount of time for this test Kinabaloo???-----Sun

 

[kinabaloo]

Well, i guess the same time for PG as for VG.

I'd really like to know if a VG and distilled water only juice (yes, quite boring) would acquire any deposit. I think will be none, other than dust from air. But till it is tried with a shiny new atty with the initial primer first rinsed out, we can#t know for sure.

 

[Sun Vaporer]

Well, i guess the same time for PG as for VG.

I'd really like to know if a VG and distilled water only juice (yes, quite boring) would acquire any deposit. I think will be none, other than dust from air. But till it is tried with a shiny new atty with the initial primer first rinsed out, we can#t know for sure.

Just mixed up some straight VG and distilled water on a new 801 and will vape it switching with my regular one for the next four days---And YES IT TASTE LIKE Garbage--taking another one for the team so I hope this gets all of us some where -------------Sun

 

[kinabaloo]

Sun - Check it after one day - if a obvious deposit seen then, you can stop there. There should be none, but who knows ...

I think you'll come to like it, maybe

Seriously, a good deed indeed ...

 

[exogenesis]

Tried something that's as extreme as I want to go, further actually.

That pirahna stuff (acid+H2O2) is based on sulphuric acid, which is a known no-go.

Thought I'd try making a small volume (25 ml) of a phos.acid version,
used 1 part 85% phos.acid + 1 part 30% H2O2
(container was put in a tray of water, outdoors, behind a perspex screen + gloves & goggles).

No heat produced by the initial liquid, but changed to a slight fawn colour, all calm,
dropped in an atomizer, & got immediate fairly violent fizzing on the atomizer esp. the copper wires,
then bubbles started forming all around the inner vessel & started warming.

Started to get nervous, expecting a super-reaction,
so I overturned the vessel into the tray then washed it away.

Coil didn't seem any cleaner than when I put it in, it's back in 40% phos acid soak again.

Sod that for a game of soldiers!

Actually I think I'll stick to the H2O2 boil-in-place for weekly cleaning,
I feel safer.