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231 points Hooke | 2 comments | | HN request time: 0.603s | source
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nvader ◴[] No.43550901[source]
I didn't find this in the article, so:

You can "recharge" silical gel by baking in the oven at 120 C for a couple of hours. If you do, be careful to remove the casing before you do, unless it is heat safe.

I have a small collection of oven safe dessicant packs that I keep on hand for emergency drying electronics.

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Workaccount2 ◴[] No.43552545[source]
You are better off soaking the wet electronics in isopropyl alcohol then trying to dry them in a bag full of desiccant.

One of the things that kills wet electronics is the dried residue that is left behind, creating shorts. Alcohol will wash away the water and leave no residue after it dries.

If the device has ink or glue you'd like to try to preserve, deionized water will mostly work too.

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hilbert42 ◴[] No.43554940[source]
"You are better off soaking the wet electronics in isopropyl alcohol."

Where I am ethanol (EtOH-95%, H2O-5%) is much cheaper and much more readily available and works almost as well. If silica gel is not available, then a fan works well followed by a warm (not hot) oven baking. Make sure the alcohol has essentially all evaporated first.

Keep in mind that some components can be affected by both EtOH and propan-2-ol — component markings, coil doping resins can dissolve, etc. Both alcohols are also good at removing solder flux resins/residues. (Oh for the days when freon and freon mixtures were available, component damage never happened.)

Devices with power transformers pose special problems, best to dry with alcohol first (hoping enamel coatings on wire aren't softened), then bake in oven on warm heat for a long while, sometimes 24 hours or more is necessary. With transformers it's important that this is done as soon as possible after wetting.

Edit: as I'm reminded by nyanpasu64 keep both alcohols away from LCD screens (likely all screens). I had a netbook PC and put it in a carry bag with a bottle of EtOH and it leaked. The PC still worked but the screen suffered the same outcome.

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SirHumphrey ◴[] No.43555022[source]
That may be country specific, but at least where I live, ethanol is much more expensive than isopropyl alcohol (30€/l vs 10€/l) - mostly because of dues on ethanol.
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hilbert42 ◴[] No.43555103[source]
Right, if you live where duty is applied to ethanol then it's expensive. In Australia, where I am ethanol is available as a denatured product. That is, it includes a very small amount (much less than 1%) of denatonium (aka Bitrex) which renders it undrinkable (it's the bitterest substance known). As such, excise tax is not levied.

Here, one liter bottles of denatured ethanol are available in every supermarket everywhere, and up to 20 liters available in hardware stores (at bulk rates it's even cheaper).

For comparison, here denatured ethanol costs about $5/l [in US dollars] versus isopropyl at between $25 and $30/l.

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DebtDeflation ◴[] No.43555319[source]
In the United States, if you buy "Denatured Alcohol" at a big box store, it will be a toxic brew of often 50-60% methanol as well as smaller amounts of MEK, MIBK, and even acetone in addition to the ethanol. However, you can order "Specially Denatured Alcohol (SDA)" from various chemical suppliers or even Amazon. "SDA 40B 200" will be 99.5% ethanol with 0.1% tert-butyl alcohol and 0.0005% denatonium benzoate. It's what I use for camp stove fuel since I refuse to carry methanol in my pack with food.
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1. AStonesThrow ◴[] No.43578853[source]
I had a recent adventure attempting to replenish my Food Grade 35% Hydrogen Peroxide.

Amazon wouldn't even ship the stuff here. I'm coming to realize that any truly potent or powerful substance is strictly off-limits in consumer spaces. Plenty of good reasons for that. But such things as pure isopropyl and pure H2O2 are so versatile and tantalizing to have on-hand, rather than household cleaners with proprietary formulas, as much dilution as possible, unique MSDS, and obnoxious fake fragrance.

I can walk down an entire aisle in the hardware store, chockablock with bottles of household cleaners, and they all amount to 2 or 3 active ingredients, endlessly remixed for credulous homemakers.

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2. hilbert42 ◴[] No.43591281[source]
35% — that's wishful thinking where I am. I can get 3% in a supermarket and 6% in a pharmacy. I can get H2O2 stronger than 6% but it's a major undertaking, and one is treated with suspicion and or put onto registers—like 'what the fuck do you want that dangerous stuff for?'.

"I'm coming to realize that any truly potent or powerful substance is strictly off-limits in consumer spaces."

There's no doubt about this and it's a damn pain. Outside industrial settings, chemicals that really work are becoming very difficult to get. I accept that highly concentrated (say >50%) H2O2 is dangerous and not something I want or need, and fuel grade (>70%) needs special handling thus the need for controls, but concentrations of about 20% are useful for bleaching where sodium hypochlorite is unsuitable, etc. For example, 6% H2O2 often isn't strong enough to remove foxing from documents, books, etc. so having ready access to a more concentrated solution that I could dilute to suit would be very useful.

It wasn't always like this, I'm old enough to remember when I could get most chemicals I wanted with little effort. Unfortunately, both occupational health and safety and terrorism have put the kibosh on ready availability, controls and restrictions have screwed all of us legitimate users.

Of course, restrictions covering to whom chemicals are sold haven't detrimentally affected the chemical companies one iota, in fact I'd maintain they've benefited them. They've proteced companies from potential lawsuits when users misuse chemicals and they've provided endless possibilities for them to market nigh-on-useless products to naïve consumers like the household cleaners to which you have referred. I could give examples of how some common household products have become less potent over the years but it'd take a full blog to go into details.

There's another downside here too, the less consumers know about the chemicals they use the more unskilled they become at actual chemistry—even if taught chemistry, using products whose ingredients are unknown doesn't add to their understanding. That's also a matter that I've not time to elaborate about here except to say lack of knowledge about chemicals is one of the significant reasons why society is becoming overly chemical-phobic.