[3dem] [External] Re: Cooling water

Fri Feb 9 17:48:38 PST 2024

Hi Ruben,

We use the same as David Mortan. Our FSEs bring grocery store distilled water (our FSEs in Nashville would buy Poland Spring and it worked well, so David S is also right). What they don't recommend is deionized. We sometimes use RO water to refill as well.

One of our fellow managers in the facility adds a bit of mouthwash to kill nasty stuff in the water. Have to say, it works like a charm and we don't have nasty films or floaties around anymore (he's used it since the 90s at Bell Labs). Before this, our FSEs would flush the system with some CLR and vinegar to deal with nasty stuff growing around and corrosion.

Hope this helps!

Mariena

Sent from my GameBoy

On Feb 9, 2024, at 8:37 PM, Morgan, David Gene <dagmorga at indiana.edu> wrote:

Hi,

We use grocery-store purchased distilled water. This is what our microscope company engineers always use, and we've had no issues with corrosion. One system had a nasty, hard to kill cyanobacterial infection, but that's the only issue here in 20+ years.

--
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                                             A. Einstein

            David Gene Morgan
        Electron Microscopy Center
             047E Simon Hall
             IU Bloomington
          812 856 1457 (office)
          812 856 3221 (3200)
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________________________________
From: 3dem <3dem-bounces at ncmir.ucsd.edu> on behalf of Tim Gruene <tim.gruene at univie.ac.at>
Sent: Friday, February 9, 2024 6:31 PM
To: Ruben Diaz <pindusito at gmail.com>
Cc: 3DEM Mailing List <3dem at ncmir.ucsd.edu>
Subject: [External] Re: [3dem] Cooling water

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Dear Ruben,

we use singly distilled water, buffered to pH 7.5-pH8 with baking
powder or Na-phosphate buffer. It should not be sour to prevent
corrosion. We also add Thermoclean Blue to keep  algae and bacteria
out, and refresh the Thermoclean annually.

Best,
Tim

On Fri, 9 Feb 2024 14:32:26 -0800 Ruben Diaz <pindusito at gmail.com>
wrote:

> Hi all,
>
> I have a silly question: what type of water do people use to keep the
> microscopes happy and chilled? We have already had two instances of
> corrosion on the cameras (K3), which have resulted in uber-pricey
> repairs, but the other parts of the microscopes seem perfectly fine
> and corrosion-free. The water does not show any unusual hardness or
> presence of ions that could be blamed for the corrosion. I am very
> interested to hear if other people have faced similar problems, and
> how they have been solved.
>
> Ruben.

--
--
Tim Gruene
Head of the Centre for X-ray Structure Analysis
Faculty of Chemistry
University of Vienna

Phone: +43-1-4277-70202

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