Crystals in Ilfotec DD-X

Good day all,
Just hoping to add to the general knowledge base with this information.

I had a new, unopened bottle of DD-X, that had been in cool storage since purchase a couple of years back. When shaking the bottle, it was quite evident that large crystals had formed during storage time. Rather than simply pour it out, I decided to have a go to see if I could dissolve the crystals back into the solution.

I first filtered out the crystals with a metal strainer, and then proceeded to grind them down as much as possible in order to make them more soluble. That done, I heated the filtered liquid up to about 55C over 30 minutes or so. The ground up crystals were then slowly mixed in, and it would appear that the developer has returned to its original state.

The good news is that the experiment seems to have worked. I developed a roll of D400 pushed to 1600 and it turned out beautifully.

My question is firstly, what could have happened to the original solution in order for crystals to form, and secondly, what part of the solution would the crystals have been?

Regards,
Kent

What constitutes "cool storage" temperature-wise? I suspect that this is key to the crystal formation I used to use DDX and never experienced crystal formation but mine was stored at room temp( say 16C to 24C) and time from purchase to empty was probably less than a year.


So it might be time related as well but I'd suspect temperature exclusively to account for the effect.

I don't think that DDX needs cool storage to extend its life and dependingon how cool cool is, it might be harmful

pentaxuser

A litle more than a year ago I had a similar experience and described it in a new thread (there was a url link here which no longer exists) . Unfortunately no one had any explanation to the phenomenon. Does the DDX require some extra caution that we are not aware of ?
Karl-Gustaf

This might be no consolation to either poster who seem to have had similar and possibly exactly the same problem but no replies to one post and if I recall correctly no other posts on this subject suggests that it is a very rare occurence.

Good to see that in neither case did it affect the developer's ability to do its job

pentaxuser

I had some fine, thready crystals form in a bottle of DD-X once. This was a bottle I bought about three years ago or so. They dissolved fine when I diluted it for use. I stirred it before pouring out the amount I needed to insure it was uniform.

The bottle in question was in a room that gets down to about 5C in the middle of winter. In the summer it gets to about 15C or so. It had been in there for 2 years or so.
Best guess is that it was related to cool temperatures and having sat for a long while.

Speaks to a fine product though, that with a little bit of work I was able to recuperate it.

Strange,but in some parts of the world,5 C might be considered near freezing,(and by the way
I lived in Ottawa for 35 years)
Regards Peter