Acrylic in Deionized Water

[curvyrace]

Hello All!

My employer has started quoting treatment of various gas and water streams that involves the use of deionized water. I don't have any experience using DI water, but understand it is corrosive and a leach agent. A couple of the systems I am laying out are small with low flow rates and I'm thinking of using acrylic flow meters for the DI water side of the system. The pressures are 60 psi max and temperatures @ 80 deg F max. My main concern is leaching of something into the DI water from the acrylic. Does anyone have experience using acrylic with DI water? Many thanks!

 

[IRstuff]

Why not just use meters intended for DI water applications?

http://www.omega.com/pptst/FLR1600.html

DI water is simply pure water, and leaches by virtue of having zero concentration of contaminants, so the diffusion gradient is strong. It's acidic if it's exposed to air and CO2 dissolves therein, resulting in carbolic acid, which is a mild acid. DI water is often transported in PE containers and used with PTFE plumbing and fittings.

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[25362]

To IRstuff, I assume it's a typing error, you mean carbonic acid, since carbolic acid is phenol.

 

[IRstuff]

Yeah, little gray cells seem to have taken the week off.

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[moltenmetal]

Acrylic flowmeters are seldom entirely made from acrylic- they almost always have metallic parts in them too.

Unless you are working with and require ultrapure water, you are likely OK with stainless steel and acrylic components, ceramics/glass for the floats or beads, and most of the other polymeric materials aside from perhaps PVC tubing are probably OK too. YOu do NOT want any copper, brass, zinc or aluminum wetted parts. If you require the water to be ultrapure, you're stuck with PTFE, PVDF, PFA and specialty grades of some of the other polymers.

 

[curvyrace]

Thanks for all the replies. The customer says they can tolerate some contamination/leaching into the DI water. The process it is being used for does not come into direct contact with the pharma product they are producing. I actually found a polysulfone flow meter from Dwyer that they say is for use in ultrapure water, so I think I'm going with that one. It has a PTFE float and polysulfone ends.