JetDry Caution/Foam!!!

[V12|V12]

A long while back I wrote about getting the mysterious "white-coats" on all the insides of my tubing and wanted to figure out what was causing this and what exactly were the plaguing things? I was at a pet store praying that I could find a new pump (cheap too) that didn't make as much latent heat/noise as my wonderful Via-1300 and stumbled upon a product called Erythromycin. It’s was supposed to stop the "white-coats," which are a mixture of lime deposits and an airborne bacteria (even more are in plain old tap water!). But for what little use of it I was going to make, I didn’t feel like shelling out near $13 for the little bottle, which I wasn’t exactly sure would work?… So I came upon an idea while cleaning… why not use some Lysol, it’s made to disinfect etc.
After adding some sparing amounts of Lysol, in hopes that I would do 2 things; 1) get rid or whatever’s coating the tubes and 2) lessening the surface tension of the water for better "wetting" action. Well it did 3 of the 2. The 3rd being after I awoke and nearly froze seeing all these bubbles that had filled all the way to the top of my reservoir! So the Lysol was out! BigBen had recommended using some SPARING amounts of Jetdry in place of the latter… And after some trials what do I have to say? NO,NO, NO!!!
I tried the 2 drops method, result; FOAM BUBBLES. Then I flushed the whole system (what a HASSLE) and made up another mixture of H20+Anti-freeze. Being that there are a few curves in my system, I couldn’t entirely get out all of the previous water-mix, but I figured that with only 2 drops in the whole batch of coolant mix I had made, what’s a little remaining going to hurt? So I added the new mixture (1:8 H2o/Anti 1500ml total mixture), result; STILL BUBBLES!!! Trying to figure out what might be causing this has been a task. Aside from now knowing to not be a cheap ass, and just spend money on some “Water-Wetter,” JetDry will NOT be in my system EVER! Alas, I’m going to have to drain the WHOLE system completely and hope there are no remains of the JetDry… If anyone had any helpful insight etc... thanks!

-Bye!

[bigben2k]

V12:V12, I'm sorry to hear about your misfortune.

I used Jet-Dry with distilled water, in a closed loop pump test (with my airtrap), and it did clear up the bubbles within the water, but I noticed after closer inspection that I had minuscule air bubbles that couldn't be seen unless my clear acrylic section was lit with a flashlight.

I got no foam whatsoever.

My airtrap's liquid level was at the top, so there was no opportunity for the inlet to cause any splashing. I even dipped a straw in the airtrap, to allow air bubbles to enter the loop, but everything cleared up in 10 seconds flat.

I let the loop run for half an hour, and there was no change.


Can you post (or link) a pic of your rig?

[Enyin]

Hiya V12|V12,
This is my first post in this forum - I've lurked for a while but since I just recently had the same problem as you with the 'white stuff' on the inside of my tubes I thought I'd post.

I have an eheim 1250 with an evaporative type setup - large res with high surface area, so my loop is not closed (pseudo bong type of setup - reason i do this is I'm prepping for a chiller I'm building and the res will contain the evaporator - then it will be closed)

Anyway, every once in a while I notice my tubes getting clouded up with that white stuff - if I squeeze the tube the pump pressure clears it away in that spot but generally it just seems to build up over time.

I tried jet dry and like you it did not clear up the problem (it did make my water smell nice - I don't use additives normally since the evaporation would make the room hazardous.
So I figured what the heck - I poured some generic supermarket non chlorine bleach in and let it run for two days - poof crystal clear again, drain - throw some more jet dry in and all set for another couple weeks.

I'm inclined to think the white stuff is mostly biological - maybe keeping the water chlorinated like a pool would help, I may try that but have been wondering about the effects of bleach and chlorine on other components (tygon especially)

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Athlon XP 1600+ @ 1.66ghz - Iwill XP333 @ 370
Radeon 9700 Pro -- 5064 3dmark 2003
Enyin, Water Cooling Nerd!

[gmat]

One of the selling points of Tygon is that it's very resistant to many chemical agents. So i'd guess it would not be the problem.
Now, chlorine / bleach on copper or brass ? Or acrylate / poly waterblock tops ...? I'll try

[Enyin]

Good point gmat, I knew tygon was tough stuff so I wasn't really worried about anything catastrophic but I never thought much about the copper - I generally view those as the 'stronger' parts of my system but that might be a mistake

I think when I get home (if I make it through the blizzard) I'll take a bucket, fill it with bleach, throw some copper and lexan in there and see what happens after a week I'll report back with any results!

Just for clarification too - I added about a cup of bleach to approx 3 gallons of water, and I had about a tablespoon of Jetdry in at the same time. Call me the mad scientist if you will - I'm probably lucky it didn't blow up!
The white stuff seemed unaffected by the bleach the first day but when it sat overnight you could see it was dissolving it very quickly.

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edited fer stupd typoes

[gmat]

Nice. I have an equivalent of Jet-Dry here, a colorless, ordorless rinsing agent. It's currently running through my loop, i'll try to add some bleach just to see...

[Enyin]

wait gmat,
I've been poking around on the web and it appears that it would be a bad idea to have any sort of chlorine in contact with copper - it apparently blackens and pits the copper.

Non chlorine bleach on the other hand is mostly made up of sodium percarbonate - which appears to be much much safer to metals

Interestingly the biggest references to this that I found on the web were from brewery's - which makes sense, they use a lot of copper and need to prevent biological contaminent in their systems. I'll do some more research but from first glance the non chlorine bleach seems to be safe to use.

EDIT:
rofl, this is interesting -- dishwasher additives like Jet Dry seem to *contain* sodium percarbonate, which is the same ingredient in non chlorine bleach, they also contain some other things like fragrance, a wetting agent and some other stuff
sodium percarbonate is related to hydrogen peroxide - is an alkaline that is relatively safe to plastics and metals - it *can* increase electrolytic action if there are two dissimlar metals in your system, but if you have that you're already in trouble

[Cova]

I still haven't had a chance to try it (we seem to have run out), but as soon as I can get my hands on some again I want to add a small amount of Sodium Metabisulfate to my coolant (which is currently distilled water and water-wetter)

I'm very slowly getting either a thin white film forming on the insides of my tubing, or the coolant itself is getting slightly cloudy, I can't tell without draining it (which I don't want to do, though I suppose I will have to when I finally decide what to upgrade to and rebuild my system).

Anyways, this chemical is used primarily (in my experience) to sterilize home-brewing equipment before use. In the strengths we use it in for wine-making, it has a fairly strong smell (though less than water-wetter) and will sterilize anything it comes in contact with in under a second - this is using it at saturation (there is still solid stuff sitting in the bottom of the storage bottle). Research with google shows it to be both a bactericide and an antioxidant, but I can't find much more than that. I'm hoping that adding just a small amount to my coolant will prevent growth, while not smelling too bad (though my system is sealed to the point that I can pressurize it to a low pressure, so there is no evaporation, I can't even smell the water-wetter).

What I worry about is it will react with the water-wetter itself. It is used in brewing, so it should be safe with the copper/brass of WB's/rads as they also use many copper/brass fittings, and I use chem-grade Tygon which is pretty much invincible. We store it in an old plastic milk-jug and it didn't eat that, so the pump should be ok. But if anyone who has the resources to do these tests with putting a few pieces of acrylic/copper/etc. into a tub with a coolant mixture for a week or two is testing various coolant mixtures again, I'd love to see some of this stuff added to one and the results posted up here.

[Asmordean]

My lines also do this. When I saw it, I immediatly thought it was calcium so I bought some CLR.

My tubes went from cloudy to clear in seconds. Whatever the stuff in my system is, it is soluble in CLR. I let a 5% solution run for about 10 minutes then drained it.

A word of caution, besides stinking to high heaven, CLR will also eat copper. That being said, the insides of my maze two went from dark and a bit cruddy to sparkling copper. It does worry me to use something that warns about using on copper right on the label though.

[V12|V12]

BigBen (others):

I've noticed a strange occurance: When ever I add a small amount of anti-Freeze in the resevoir while everything is running, the bubbles slowly start to subside, but then eventually come back, I'm thinking it's because the temp of the added fluid... I don't really want to have to reflush the whole system, but I might, even though the bubbles aren't really doing much (if any) harm, I don't like them there (grin). One other thing that I've noticed is that when I fill my drainage tube with water, and seal it off with a rubber stopper, the fuild level starts to slowly disappear over a weekly period, I'm thinking that the foam bubbles are evaporating away and thus fuild is being wasted (gaseous form)?...

Here's a MS-paint pic of my Resevoir and foam

[bigben2k]

In that configuration, you'd be better off having the coolant shoot to either side, instead of shooting at the top.

Your airtrap looks familiar: didn't we go over this before? Didn't we tell you that the splashing would become a problem?

Are you able to top up the airtrap with fluid, as high as it'll take it?

[bigben2k]

I found it.

Here's the thread where I told you to cut a slit in that copper tube.

Here's where it all started. (Note the urgency...)