Effective solvent for Blix sludge

[drmoss_ca]

Can anyone tell me what would be the best solvent for the duck-egg green sludge in a bottle that has had Blix stored in it?

Seven years ago I started colour processing, and not knowing any better, I bought concertina bottles for air exclusion. I had an eighteen month hiatus from photography due to health reasons and the last lot of C-41 chemistry has sat in those bottles for that time. The blix bottle is coated inside with pale green sludge, and small fragments are released with each rinse, and I foresee these causing specks on the next film I do. I know now that concertina bottles are denigrated for this reason, as mechanical scrubbing isn't able to address it. I've tried many shakings with hot water, and one with vinegar. Presumably there is a chemical way of dissolving this nastiness?

 

[pentaxuser]

You might try good old-fashioned household strong bleach at a very small dilution like 1+4 or even stronger in the bottle for several days or even a week if you can afford to leave it in that lojng and not need the bottle. My experience of bleach is that given long enough it works on blix or it does so in a Nova Processor slot.

pentaxuser

 

[drmoss_ca]

I'll give it a try! Thanks.

 

[pentaxuser]

Yes patience may be the key. Household bleach eventually took off all the strong tea stain on the inside of a stainless steel teapot that had been there for goodness knows how many years. It did nothing at all for maybe 5 to 7 days then things began to happen, very slowly at first but with increasing speed until eventually it all disappeared. OK tea stain is not blix but I despaired of anything remotely safe in a household environment would work until bleach and patience did

pentaxuser

 

[koraks]

Presumably there is a chemical way of dissolving this nastiness?

Yes, there is:
1: Uncap the bottle.
2: Let the bottle dry thoroughly, inside and out.
3: Set it on fire.
You have now gained some space you can use for decent bottles.

Sorry to be cynical about it, but life is just too short to waste time repairing something that is fundamentally broken!

 

[MattKing]

I agree with koraks, except I would replace 3. with the non-chemical "Discard the bottle".
Consider the sludge as a blessing, because it forced you to discard the bottle.

 

[mshchem]

Yes, there is:
1: Uncap the bottle.
2: Let the bottle dry thoroughly, inside and out.
3: Set it on fire.
You have now gained some space you can use for decent bottles.

Sorry to be cynical about it, but life is just too short to waste time repairing something that is fundamentally broken!

 

[drmoss_ca]

But if I can get the crap out of the bottle I can use it for chemicals that don't leave a sludge, and save that particular piece of plastic from floating around the oceans. Method in my madness, you know.

 

[lantau]

The sludge is probably elemental sulfur plus various decomposition product. You just can't dissolve/react it away in a reasonable manner inside that bottle.

If your household refuse is going to landfill instead of an incinerator, and you suspect it might end up getting washed into a stream you can try burning it yourself in an outdoor fireplace. If you have good heat/ember going and people not too close the sulfur will possibly burn better the plastic. Normally I would avoid doing that. But my household waste gets incinerated (thermal recycling as the industry calls it) or I can bring it to the quarterly hazmat collection. At least the liquid stuff goes into a high temperature incinerator. Don't know how they process solids and the containers.

If it ends up buried inside the landfill, at least sulfur is fairly inert. It used to be extracted from up to 100m strong underground sulfur deposits in Louisiana and Texas, using superheated steam.

 

[koraks]

But if I can get the crap out of the bottle I can use it for chemicals that don't leave a sludge, and save that particular piece of plastic from floating around the oceans. Method in my madness, you know.

You're right of course Frankly, I wouldn't set fire to these bottles myself, or probably discard them. Much more likely I'd donate them to someone who appreciates them (kind of an ambivalent gesture) or perhaps shelve them with the same intent as you. But I also know I would come across them months or years from now, unused, taking up space...

The main issue is that as @lantau points out, it's difficult/impossible to remove this sludge, and to make matters worse, AFAIK these bottles are either opaque black or brown and due to their unique shape, it's impossible to verify if any sludge/cake removal operation has been 100% effective. You'll always be left with a "maybe..." bottle.

 

[Rudeofus]

But if I can get the crap out of the bottle I can use it for chemicals that don't leave a sludge, and save that particular piece of plastic from floating around the oceans. Method in my madness, you know.

There are some compounds, which may form in expired bleach, which are extremely insoluble. Iron Sulfide may be one such compound, and it is indeed green. It can be dissolved in strong acid, but the resulting Hydrogen Sulfide is extremely poisonous, so please do this somewhere outside and/or well vented. Yes, I know, it's winter in Canada, "outside" and "well vented" do not sound attractive, but severe poisoning is even less so.

The sludge you describe may well be a mixture of compounds: besides the Iron Sulfide it may comprise plain rust (to be dissolved over weeks in strong sequestering agent), Sulfur (to be dissolved in alkaline concentrated Sodium Sulfite solution). Different components will require different and incompatible means to dissolve them (e.g. rust will dissolve much better in acid than in alkali), and in the end you will have spent months and created enough hazardous waste to make 20 such bottles.

If you consider this as a personal research project and fun, it may be worth pursuing it, but in terms of protecting the environment you'd be better off with @koraks' advice.

 

[drmoss_ca]

Thank you - if there is no simple solution (pun intended) I shall simply find something else to keep blix in. I'm in two minds about going back to C-41 anyway - it was always a PITA to get the temperatures right, do the agitations etc etc. I'm going to give the room temperature semi-stand method a try, and if it won't work for me I'll just stick to B&W.

 

[mshchem]

I'm terrible about hoarding bottles. I went down to my darkroom last night and took an arm load of clean 2L juice bottles and put in my recycle bin. Modern consumer plastic bottles are amazing.

 

[mtjade2007]

Thank you - if there is no simple solution (pun intended) I shall simply find something else to keep blix in. I'm in two minds about going back to C-41 anyway - it was always a PITA to get the temperatures right, do the agitations etc etc. I'm going to give the room temperature semi-stand method a try, and if it won't work for me I'll just stick to B&W.

I once asked a similar question about cleaning stains of my chemical bottles. Most people who replied said to toss the bottles and replaced them with new ones. Well, the bottles I was talking about were Jobo 1 litter sized bottles. If you check eBay now for its pricing I am sure you will say ouch! Fortunately I kept those bottles all these days still. I scrubbed them as hard as I could. I feel comfortable to use them again for C-41 bleach and fixer. I don't need them for developer anyway. By the way I don't think C-41 in room temperature is a good idea. Do it at 100 degree is still the right way to go.

 

[AgX]

... the resulting Hydrogen Sulfide is extremely poisonous, so please do this somewhere outside and/or well vented. Yes, I know, it's winter in Canada, "outside" and "well vented" do not sound attractive, but severe poisoning is even less so.

Do not exeggerate. The repellant odor of this chemical is most strong, there also is mucous membrane irritation and the rise of concentration in this case would be slow so that a poisoning is not imaginable.
It was long time legal as joke item. And still is in places.
It even is produced at some photographic toning.

Dangerous would be fast and extreme rise of concentration as in leaking pressurized gas bottle, caverns filled with this gas originating from organic decay, or willingly remaining in place in spite of all irritation.

 

[drmoss_ca]

By the way I don't think C-41 in room temperature is a good idea. Do it at 100 degree is still the right way to go.

You may be right, but I'm not unhappy with my first try today:


F6, 50/1.4, 20+12mm ext. tubes, Portra 400, Argentix presskit, Nikon 9000 scan.

 

[MattKing]

The proof is in the people with developing colour negative film - include some well lighted flesh tones - ones with gradations of light from shadows to highlights.

 

[drmoss_ca]

I don't want to take the thread way off topic, and I'm a little short of people these days being under 'house arrest' after a bone marrow transplant. I've had three Covid vaccines and I'm still advised not to go out into the world as they probably haven't made any antibodies. But I did include one shot of my son putting out bread for his ravens at his house (they start calling to him as soon as he steps outside, and come and eat the lot in less than a minute!)



I can't pretend it was perfect. All the images had a slight purple cast that could be dealt with using temp/tint WB controls (I scanned RAW with a Nikon 9000, and used the ColorPerfect plug-in to handle the inversion). I shall put a roll of the same film into a camera and develop it conventionally, so I can see if the results are different. It might just be age - the film is years out of date but has been frozen since purchase.

 

[pentaxuser]

Looks fine to me but we are back to the same discussion held many times over that there has been on every occasion C41 is developed at less than 100F

Namely, how to judge success. If this required some scanning manipulation as this one has had, can one do this with an optical enlarger and RA4 paper or does it require the kind of scanning manipulation denied to the enlarger group or was the scanning manipulation required simply because the film is years out of date?

What will be interesting if this is what mean by developed conventionally with similarly aged film is what you then have to do, if anything at all, with scanning manipulation at a temp of 100F

Thanks

pentaxuser

 

[drmoss_ca]

'Developed conventionally' means at ~100ºF for the usual times. Yes, my purpose is to see if that gets rid of the purple cast. I can make it go away after scanning, but I'd rather the colours came out right and didn't need that much correction.

 

[MattKing]

I see lots of crossover in that example - unless your son is extremely jaundiced, and the deck was stained using a light blue stain.

 

[pentaxuser]

drmoss-ca, I can't see any jaundice let alone extreme jaundice in your son's face so good job I am not Matt's doctor when he has jaundice I have seen lots of decks look very similar to this with my naked eye. Yes there is a hint of a kind of grey-blue in the uprights behind your son but I have seen that effect in other pictures of weathered wood

So how much worse was it in the "straight neg" in terms of his face and uprights in the decking prior to scanning correction? If you can go to the scene again easily, can you say if the horizontal decking is a different colour from the uprights or what appears to be stacked wood behind your son? That may be easier than looking at the neg

Sounds as if a same scene, same light, same but fresh film neg needs to be developed at 100F to be sure

pentaxuxer

 

[drmoss_ca]

I know jaundice when I see it! And what I see there isn't jaundice (sorry, Matt!), but an incorrectly developed photograph. It's tolerable, sort of, for that scene. The weathered wood is correct, and the object on the deck behind Thomas is an upturned planter that should be grey, not purple. But Matt is correct about crossover - the siding of the house is actually dark green, but scans and inverts to purple. I can make it brown with some manipulation, but not green. This isn't good enough to tolerate all the time. I knew there was a good reason why I've stuck to B&W for the last three years! I'll do another Portra 400 at the usual temp and compare. I expect it will be fine, as I've had no colour-cast issues with my frozen film before.

Anyway, since this no longer has anything to do with sludge, I'll start a new thread comparing the results when I have the second film finished and developed.

 

[pentaxuser]

House, what house? is what I was about to right when on close examination I see something in between the thick upright to the right of your son as we look at the scene and the next thinner upright immediately to its left. It has what appears to be a white clock face with a black background. Is this the house to which you refer? If so the colour I see is almost the same as the upright's colour but yes, it's not dark green.

What I find strange about colour crossover is that there is dark brown-green in the picture i.e. the foliage on the tree over the water which looks perfectly natural so what distorts the house siding green from the tree green?

The whole business of colour crossover and why and how it manifests itself in some areas of a negative but not others, mystifies me. It doesn't seem to be predictable or is it?

Here I am thinking of the example of a "no colour crossover neg developed at 100F and then the identical scene but this time two more negs are developed at say 95F and then 90F. Is it possible for the experts in crossover to say how the neg will have changed each time and in which colour areas or is it a random thing in which all that can be said is there might be crossover below temperature X but there will definitely be crossover by temperature Y and if so what are the values X and Y and are there colours in which the crossover will be the most likely to occur?

pentaxuser

 

[drmoss_ca]

I know, the house and it's siding don't appear in the photo. They may not appear in the comparison, as I'm unlikely to get back up there before I develop the second film.

I'm evidently losing my memory, BTW. I thought this was the first time I did this at room temp, at the same time remembering an effort I made some years back to do it at a lower temp than 100ºF. I checked, and in 2016 it was room temperature at which I developed some Superia 400:



The colours still aren't quite right, but they are close and there is green. Seems that what I did (thank goodness for keeping notes) was to dilute the colour developer 1+5, and do 30 seconds agitation every ten minutes for a total time of 50 minutes. I don't remember what I did with the blix, but probably left it an hour with one inversion every 20 minutes like I did yesterday.
I'm no chemist, but it seems to me there are many reactions, some requiring penetration of reagents into the deeper layers of the emulsion, taking place during colour development, and temperature and reagent concentrations are planned so that all will come to completion at the same time. Start playing with dilution and temperature and the gloves come off. No doubt it can be done, but find another sweet spot where all layers of emulsion develop perfectly at the same time might require prolonged experimentation.