Wetting agent destroys bottles?

[AgX]

Resistant against Glycol.

 

[jochen]

Hello,
I'm a chemist and we know this phenomenon very well in our lab. Bottles made of HDPE and PP get stress cracks from certain detergents with similar structures like the Triton X 100 from PhotoFlo. Glass bottles are better but the PE screw stoppers get destroyed too. There are fluorinated HDPE bottles on the market and special HDPE screw stoppers cross-linked by elctron beams which are more resistant, maybe a stopper of phenolic resin is better suited.

 

[JPD]

Hello,
I'm a chemist and we know this phenomenon very well in our lab. Bottles made of HDPE and PP get stress cracks from certain detergents with similar structures like the Triton X 100 from PhotoFlo. Glass bottles are better but the PE screw stoppers get destroyed too. There are fluorinated HDPE bottles on the market and special HDPE screw stoppers cross-linked by elctron beams which are more resistant, maybe a stopper of phenolic resin is better suited.

What a great post! Now I'm leaning to buy a glass bottle with glass stopper.

 

[Photo Engineer]

Glass stoppers often get stuck in the bottle and cannot be removed except by draconian means. Often you end up breaking either the bottle or stopper.

Actually, Photo Flo is sold in plastic bottles and does not seem to crack them at all. When diluted, I have had no problems either, using inexpensive plastic containers for the working solution. So, I'm happy and I'm not going to do anything different.

PE

 

[Gerald C Koch]

None of the ingredients in Photo-Flo should have any effect on either polypropylene or polyethylene. Sometimes the seam/mold line of these plastic bottles opens up it seems to be a weak spot in their design.

 

[RalphLambrecht]

None of the ingredients in Photo-Flo should have any effect on either polypropylene or polyethylene. Sometimes the seam of these plastic bottles opens up it seems to be a weak spot in their design.

material choice is a design issue

 

[DREW WILEY]

Get your bottles from a real lab supply. Or at least read their data page on chem compatibility issues. Who knows what kind of crap is being
used in those thin cheapie outsourced camera store bottles, or what kinds of contaminants came on the plastic to begin with. Photoflo is far less reactive than typical salad dressing, so go figure.

 

[JPD]

None of the ingredients in Photo-Flo should have any effect on either polypropylene or polyethylene. Sometimes the seam/mold line of these plastic bottles opens up it seems to be a weak spot in their design.

Get your bottles from a real lab supply. Or at least read their data page on chem compatibility issues. Who knows what kind of crap is being
used in those thin cheapie outsourced camera store bottles, or what kinds of contaminants came on the plastic to begin with. Photoflo is far less reactive than typical salad dressing, so go figure.

The little 100 ml bottle was bought by my father decades ago, and he doesn't remember from where he got it. And the Kodak Photoflo bottle must have been defective. I got a new one, and all seems to be fine.

Thanks for all replies!

 

[fotch]

With all this fear of breaking glass bottles, I suppose many are using a plastic lens for their cameras.

 

[gzhuang]

If you're not careful, Xtol can cause some pretty massive damage.

 

[ozphoto]

When I managed a pro lab, I grabbed several empty C41 bleach bottles and cleaned thoroughly; these have served me well for almost 20 years - they're probably *the* most indestructible plastic bottles I've ever come across.

As they're also opaque, they are my version of the brown glass bottles, which are not only expensive in AU, but rather hard to come by.