Why NO Citric Acid anymore?
If they already have the citric acid, just leave it. It’s obviously working OK.
Next cleaning (maintenance rinse), switch to pure lye.
The two ‘problems’ are:
1. That not all Citric Acid is ‘pure’. MANY of the samples also contain oils that cause foaming in the electrolyzer.
Foaming causes rapid lye loss as the foam rides out of the machine with the gas.
This also puts lye into the filter and humidifier water… Not Good.
2. The impurities in some Citric Acid react with the lye (NaOH) to form excessive sludge (a soapy waxy substance), plugging up the machine and/or requiring excessively short times between maintenance rinses.
These things did not happen with the PURE Citric Acid that we used for our testing in the lab. So we had no idea that these impurities existed or what they’d do.
We originally recommended Citric Acid because it had some complementary benefits.
1. it tended to mitigate the caustic of the lye (lowered pH).
2. it helps keep the machine clean inside.
3. it tended to REDUCE foaming.
Citric Acid is NOT an efficient electrolyte and does nothing to increase the efficiency of generating the gas. It’s uses were complementary.
We recommended Citric Acid as an OPTIONAL addition from the start of the AquaCure and now we (embarrassingly) withdrawal that recommendation because the ‘side effects’ of the ubiquitous impurities are too great.
There’s no way to guarantee that any given sample of Citric Acid will be pure enough to be used and using Citric Acid wasn’t enough of an advantage to try to find guaranteed pure sources.
USE PURE LYE! Do NOT add Citric Acid!
-Why NO Citric Acid anymore?
If they already have the citric acid, just leave it. It’s obviously working OK.
Next cleaning (maintenance rinse), switch to pure lye.
The two ‘problems’ are:
1. That not all Citric Acid is ‘pure’. MANY of the samples also contain oils that cause foaming in the electrolyzer.
Foaming causes rapid lye loss as the foam rides out of the machine with the gas.
This also puts lye into the filter and humidifier water… Not Good.
2. The impurities in some Citric Acid react with the lye (NaOH) to form excessive sludge (a soapy waxy substance), plugging up the machine and/or requiring excessively short times between maintenance rinses.
These things did not happen with the PURE Citric Acid that we used for our testing in the lab. So we had no idea that these impurities existed or what they’d do.
We originally recommended Citric Acid because it had some complementary benefits.
1. it tended to mitigate the caustic of the lye (lowered pH).
2. it helps keep the machine clean inside.
3. it tended to REDUCE foaming.
Citric Acid is NOT an efficient electrolyte and does nothing to increase the efficiency of generating the gas. It’s uses were complementary.
We recommended Citric Acid as an OPTIONAL addition from the start of the AquaCure and now we (embarrassingly) withdrawal that recommendation because the ‘side effects’ of the ubiquitous impurities are too great.
There’s no way to guarantee that any given sample of Citric Acid will be pure enough to be used and using Citric Acid wasn’t enough of an advantage to try to find guaranteed pure sources.
USE PURE LYE! Do NOT add Citric Acid!2
