Dry cell foam problem...

[bennyw25]

Does anyone have an idea what is the best Anti Foam or Defoamer?

[astrocady]

I am interested in other's opinions on this, too.

I normally don't have much foaming from my cells, but I do have one unit in the field with a about 300 hours on it that has foamed from day one. I even pulled the cell, dissasembled, cleaned and reassembled, but it still foams. A few weeks ago I got some "Spa Time" antifoamer for hot tubs at WalMart and tried it. It cut the foam down right away, but didn't seem to work for all that long.

I'm hoping there are better brands out there, but haven't had the time yet to research.

On the good news side, I've been using this in my bubblers and it works great there. Stops the foaming that occurs after the bubbler water gets a little KOH in it. Now I mix some of the antifoam into a gallon of distilled water and use that to fill my bubblers, then about once a week and enpty that into my reservoir tank and refill.

[myoldyourgold]

Have you tried draining flushing and running NaOH for 8 hours. Then draining and flushing it again. (Of course with good distilled water) You can then go back to KOH. It is worth a try. It worked for me and might in your case too. What is causing it is what we need to understand. I suspected the distilled water. If it is commercial in a plastic jug and been on the shelf for a while I think it causes problems. I no longer buy distilled water but make my own and only store it in stainless steal containers. I use RO water and make sure I clean the distiller before using it every time.

[astrocady]

No, I haven't tried NaOH. This unit is a loaner/test unit and will probably be coming back in with a month, so if I have the chance, I'll give it a try. Thanks
Steve

[H2OPWR]

I have had foam issues in the past as have most of us. From my experience the majority of the foam is caused from simply over amping the device. In every instance I have had but one (caused by dishsoap) just reducing the amount of current caused the foam to dissapear.

Larry

[myoldyourgold]

Larry you are right about over amping that will cause the problem. That is easy to fix and not usually done for extended periods. Over amping aside, I have only found in my case some kind of contamination, (at least what I thought was contamination), caused the problem at the proper amps. I just do not understand the why. It really did not make any sense and only happened a couple of times. I have had no occurrences after I started making my own distilled water. I have no idea if that really solved the problem.

[astrocady]

I am overamping this system a little, but it really has always foamed, even when run at low amps. I've always blamed it on the pump that is used to circulate the electrolyte through the cell.

The previous user/tester abused the unit, allowing it to run for several hours with the pump inlet clogged (long story). When I got it back I tore everything down, including the cell. It was really dirty (suspect non-distilled water had been used), so I cleaned all the plates and re-did the break-in conditioning with new electrolyte. After about 40 hours at low amps, I changed electrolyte again and put it back into service. It foamed during the conditioning and is still foaming, although the anti-foam stuff seems to help.