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Protectan on the budget, a small experiment

seems like a lot of trouble and kind of dangerous to fill your chemistry containers
with a flammable gas ...

why not just use accordion bottles ?
or use marbles in your bottles to increase the volume
so you won't have a lot of space at the top.

or not worry about the 1 or 4 euros of chemistry that might go bad ??
 
One of the bottles of Kodak RA4 developer concentrate kit is a fair bit more that 4 euro. Which is why I use argon or nitrogen.
 
The argon bottles from winesaverpro are a little expensive but they work well, i have a Tetenal C41 kit now opened for more than 4 months and still going strong. I use it in Kodak's E-6 kit too and it is equally as long lasting. No need to blow up your darkroom just to save a penny or two.
 
wouldn't putting the chemicals in a wine bottle and then use one of those wine vacuums work ?
i didn't realize the chemicals where that expensive!

john
 

It's not dangerous unless you have a habit of using an open flame in the darkroom. Accordion bottles are a scam. They don't work nearly as well as you'd be led to believe. The caps don't seal well, and they are made of the wrong kind of plastic to boot - not that it matters with the leaky caps. Marbles are a pain in the ass. Try getting them OUT of the bottle when you want to refill it.
 
I agree with Frank, I find them useless. The plastic has to be thin to make them compressible and it means they're more likely to absorb air through the walls. The caps are not airtight either, at least the bottle I had. The bottle would fully expand once compressed and capped, which means it leaked! Cleaning them would also be troublesome, as opposed to plain bottles. My solution is fizzy drink bottles, which have to be airtight. Use a reasonable size, fill it nearly to the top and add some propane - butane. That's for developer, fixers and stop baths don't need that kind of treatment, they last very well without special treatment.
 
Bloxygen is sold to preserve wood finishes; argon in a can.

Ever rap an accordian bottle after filling? Hundreds of air bubbles trapped in the 'creases' of the bottle rise to the surface.....
 
Cubitaners do a reasonable job of keeping air away from liquids:

Dead Link Removed

Available in several grades, cardboard outer containers keep the jug from rolling off the shelf like a water balloon.
 
Both solutions (the one with camping gas on top of it and that with air) have turned equally yellowish. I was never intent on using the solutions for developing anything so I chucked both today.

I do wonder now why the gas-topped mix has gone yellow (oxidized) too. The bottles can't be the problem: they previously held D76 stock for over a year and that worked out fine. My guess is that not all the air (oxygen) was replaced by the camping gas. The remaining oxygen must have killed the 'protected' solution- more slowly than the unprotected solution, but eventually, after a month, just as effectively.

The lesson to me is that it is more important to keep as little room for gas of whichever type as possible than to try replace large volumes of air. Filling up with protectan or something similar does slow down oxidation but not by huge factors (not more than 5x or so).

There is also the possibility that the mercatans in the camping gas messed with the solution, but I don't really believe that, considering the mercatans' small concentration and, as far as I know, less-than-enormous oxidizing power.
 
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You orginally said "natural gas" which is lighter than air and won't work as a protectorate. LP gas is heavier than air and, other than the danger of using, should work. You are now mentioning camping gas which is LP?

Maybe Rodinal mixed just doesn't last. Perhaps a test with ID11 ot D76 might be more telling. Interesting!
 
Ether can be bought as "quick start" in any automotive store.

I never use any gas in bottles. I bought a bunch of 250ml bottles and I decant chems into these. By the time the dev starts to change colour, I've pretty much used it up. I bought the bottles from a guy on ebay for about $20 for 84 of them with tops. Shipping was about 30. They are brown glass with plastic tops with a teflon seal. Best $50 I ever spent.
 
Don't bother with the "Quick Start", it has oil in it as an upper cylinder lubricant. Ether is a super good degreaser. Use Ronsonol butane, it has no added mercaptan. You would probably be better off pouring in some molten paraffin wax as you do when making jams or jellies, it would be easier to remove than a film of oil.
 

Somebody mentioned natural gas somewhere in this thread. I assumed that this is the same thing as camping gas and mixed up the terms. To be honest I never knew that the gas we use for cooking/heating inside our homes is not at all the same thing as camping gas. I do now.

BTW I'm talking about the FX39 1+9 mix that I mentioned in the first post.

Sorry for all the confusion
 
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