I had an unusual experience today in chemistry.

I came from a commercial encap job with my Brute with tank where I used DS at normal ditultion ratios. Pretty much ran the tank dry except for the tiny dribble in the bottom that won't draw up.

Next job was an old water damage job that was totally dried down adn back to square one except for about 5m2 (50sq ft approx) of cellulosic browning from the jute backing. This was preexistant due to being called in on day 3!!!.

Any way, I realised that I didn't have my pumpup sprayer with me so I thought I'll just mix up my peroxide A&B and spray through the Brute and scrub it all in on the one go.

WHOA!!!! foam everywhere. Din't have my digi camera either (just got back from Aussie and hadn't loaded van properly) but this tank was pouring out faom through the top after adding only 1.25 litres (about 1/3 gallon) and the solution which went in cold came out too hot to handle through latex gloves. Also because of the reaction, the spray system refused to work.

Product of choice on that ocassion was Prochems Stain Rescue.

Any comments Rick? other than rinse three times between chemicals

I guess it was just an accident brought about by circumstances but worth noting for future reference.

John

John Middleton
Carpet Pro Ltd
Palmerston North
New Zealand

Hey John,
Being in the Janitorial business and we use Hydrogen Peroxide to clean I can see that happening. What's in Stain Rescue? HP can react rather violently when mixed with the wrong Chemicals.

I'm not sure what caused it. Peroxide likes an acid pH, and DS is slightly alkaline, but that shouldn't have caused foaming.

I just went and tested DS with a peroxide based detergent that we've been testing. There was no foaming at all. So there has to be something weird going on with your A-B peroxide mix.

What you described reminds me of OSR mixed with HOT water. That stuff used to foam all over the place on me. I finally quit using it because it was so unpredictable.






Rick Gelinas
rick@excellent-supply.com

What is A&B peroxide mix? Peroxide + accelerator such as ammonia?

Yes Jeff, Ammonia which is a high pH is generally used as the accelerator for Peroxide or other oxidizers. Generally, acids or low pH is used to neutralize oxidizers.

The opposite is true of Reducing agents such as sodium metabisulfite where acid is used to accelerate the reaction and Ammonia is used to neutralize.

oxidizers and reducers also usually neutralize each other.

Rick Thode
rick@releasit.ca

I don't what is in the stuff you used John but about the ONLY time I don't add anything to Peroxide is when correcting cellulosic browning. However, one of my Techs has created a white cloud and plenty of heat by applying peroxide (alone) to some cotton rug fringes that had been previously treated with a reducing agent.