drdave

Hey all,
I don't know if this had been suggested before. I was at the store earlier and picked up some cleaner for my coffee maker. I had a bunch of nearly dead atomizers and thought what the heck. So I soaked them in a bit of the cleaner for about an hour. I can't say they are back to 100 percent but they are hitting close to 70 percent of new now. The stuff has a couple of acidic compounds for cutting mineral scale in the coffee pot. It must be fairly safe as you just flush it out by running two cycles of clean water afterwards in the coffee maker. All I did was soak the attys in the stuff for about an hour, flushed them with a lot of clean tap water, blew them out on a paper towel and reprimed. It might be worth a shot if you got atomizers that are totally or near totally dead. It looks as though the active ingreident in this brand is Sulfamic Acid. This is also used in denture cleaner, household cleaners, fire supression and a whole bunch of other things. It looks as though water flushing and dilution is the best way of mitigating it. The company link also contains an MSDS so you can determine for yourself if you want to try it.


This is the stuff I used:
Whink Products Company

Most grocery stores and department stores keep it around where the coffee supplies are at. This particular stuff is a liquid, not a powder. I hope this helps someone.

anonymous

Just my opinion, granted, but i'd like to bring up the following. This MSDS is for a solution that contains water. This water will be removed in what i'd assume to be significant amounts leaving a higher strength chemical composition when vaping. Also, we don't know what residue or reaction will take place when combined with the materials inside an atomizer. However, I must site it's non-corrosive so reactions should be minimal. The below are from your MSDS in the products raw state.

Pros:

1. Not Corrosive
2. Non-Flammable
3. No Carcinogens

Cons:

1. Eyes: May cause irritation and scratching of eyes. May cause burns.
2. Skin:May cause irritation and dryness. May cause burns.
3. Inhalation:May cause irritation of respiratory tract and mucous membranes. May cause burns.
4. Ingestion: Harmful or fatal if swallowed. Ingestion may cause burning to gastrointestinal tract.

***I'd ensure that every last drop of this stuff is off my atomizer before vaping***

anonymous

drdave,

If you've got the spare time and some dirty atomizers (and have someone you know to test the results on) i'd be very interested in trying the following to clean a dirty atomizer.

1. Using an Acetic Acid <=5% solution (5% = Distilled White Vinegar). This is an old remedy to descale a coffee pot. AA solution only ranks as a 2 for Health on its MSDS
2. Using CLR cleaner on your dirty atomizers. I like the components that make up this substance; I can also attest to how well this product seems to work on everything I use it on to remove scaling:

Component/CAS#/Osha Hazard/% by Weight
1. Water 7732-18-5 NO 70-81
2. Lactic Acid 79-33-4 YES 15-20
3. Gluconic Acid 526-95-4 N0 2-4
4. Lauryldimethyl Hydroxysultaine 13197-76-7 N0 1-4
5. Propylene Glycol Normal Butyl Ether 5131-66-8 YES 1-2

3. Do you know what metal the atomizers are made of as well as any other metals in the atomizer? It could be as simple as hooking up a 9V battery to some metal in a acid bath to rejuvenate these things.

drdave

Anonymous,
I can say as far as the coffee maker cleaner solution goes, it is not harsh enough to react with the visible metals in the atomizer. This seems to hold true for the hour long exposure time they were in the solution. It appears as though the external housing on the "M" series are made of aluminum or perhaps stainless, and the coil is wound nichrome wire. I have not been able to determine the compositon of the wicking material, obviously an extemely fine wire mesh. Some people on the forums call this stuff "troll hair". CLR would be a good choice for busting scale, but it also aggressively attacks ferrous metals. It would be worth an experiment.

anonymous

I like your point about the ferrous reactivity; I wonder what the byproduct of the metal breakdown is. FeSO4 + C17H37NO4S = ? and then the SS reaction = ? Anyone feel like doing some reactant/reagent redux work at midnight......because this guy doesn't. At quick glance i'm going to guess we're looking at some carbon di or mon oxide gas, sulfur gas, and dissolved iron.

All chem BS aside my main thought was that it scores a zero on reactivity, so you'd think it would be safe on most metals, even the Chromium in the steel & NiChrome. After doing some reading i've found conflicting results. The CLR company claims it works wonderfully on SS, Al, and Cr (Q = "Can I use CLR Metal Clear to polish my automobile hubcaps? A = Yes. CLR Metal Clear does a great job of cleaning chrome, stainless steel and aluminum hubcaps and wheels."); but then i've read that it looks wonderful at first, then changes to rust the next day. Check this out though, pretty impressive if you ask me.

Anyways, i'm putting way too much work into this and I think you and I should just try it. I've got the CLR and will soon enough have some dirty atomizers. If you beat me to it that's cool too. Please let me know, great chatting chem with you; it's been a while for me. I'm anxiously waiting to order my first e-cig (going with the Modern Vapor Sidesho) and i'll take a good long look at the atomizer on it. At $12.95/atomizer I totally understand your want to rejuvenate them.