Comment by hilbert42
2 days ago
"You are better off soaking the wet electronics in isopropyl alcohol."
Where I am ethanol (EtOH-95%, H2O-5%) is much cheaper and much more readily available and works almost as well. If silica gel is not available, then a fan works well followed by a warm (not hot) oven baking. Make sure the alcohol has essentially all evaporated first.
Keep in mind that some components can be affected by both EtOH and propan-2-ol — component markings, coil doping resins can dissolve, etc. Both alcohols are also good at removing solder flux resins/residues. (Oh for the days when freon and freon mixtures were available, component damage never happened.)
Devices with power transformers pose special problems, best to dry with alcohol first (hoping enamel coatings on wire aren't softened), then bake in oven on warm heat for a long while, sometimes 24 hours or more is necessary. With transformers it's important that this is done as soon as possible after wetting.
Edit: as I'm reminded by nyanpasu64 keep both alcohols away from LCD screens (likely all screens). I had a netbook PC and put it in a carry bag with a bottle of EtOH and it leaked. The PC still worked but the screen suffered the same outcome.
That may be country specific, but at least where I live, ethanol is much more expensive than isopropyl alcohol (30€/l vs 10€/l) - mostly because of dues on ethanol.
Right, if you live where duty is applied to ethanol then it's expensive. In Australia, where I am ethanol is available as a denatured product. That is, it includes a very small amount (much less than 1%) of denatonium (aka Bitrex) which renders it undrinkable (it's the bitterest substance known). As such, excise tax is not levied.
Here, one liter bottles of denatured ethanol are available in every supermarket everywhere, and up to 20 liters available in hardware stores (at bulk rates it's even cheaper).
For comparison, here denatured ethanol costs about $5/l [in US dollars] versus isopropyl at between $25 and $30/l.
In the United States, if you buy "Denatured Alcohol" at a big box store, it will be a toxic brew of often 50-60% methanol as well as smaller amounts of MEK, MIBK, and even acetone in addition to the ethanol. However, you can order "Specially Denatured Alcohol (SDA)" from various chemical suppliers or even Amazon. "SDA 40B 200" will be 99.5% ethanol with 0.1% tert-butyl alcohol and 0.0005% denatonium benzoate. It's what I use for camp stove fuel since I refuse to carry methanol in my pack with food.
7 replies →
Isn't the ethanol denatured? There's a duty on that as well?
It is, with denatonium hence no excise tax.