Salt Fog ASTM B117 Volume Collection 1

[omenous]

Hello all,

A few weeks/months ago I was given a manual and told to get a pair of Salt Fog Chambers up and running. Both chambers had been dormant for 13 years and I have never ran one/seen one before.

You can see where this is going....

So after reading the manual and the B117 method & D1654 method, and about 10 repairs, the cannibalizing of one chamber, and scrapping of the other, we are up and running.

I am a lab rat, so I will be doing the testing/maintaining.
So far it breaks down every 10 days. We are on our 10th day now and 1 week ago we finally put actual test panels in.

I'm sort of figuring this thing out as I go.

My question/issue is with section 10.2 of ASTM B-117-09 where it says I need to collect 1.0-2.0ml of solution per hour based on a 16hour cycle.

I get it. I even have the cylinder with plastic funnel & stopper as described in Note 9. I purchased the funnel, cylinder & stopper as a kit from Auto TEchnology.

My issue is that only the 'near' cylinder is collection the required volume of solution where the 'far' cylinder is not; its only collecting about .4-.5ml per hour on an average 16 hour cycle. At times I can get it to collect more if I move the cylinder a litle closer to the fog, but would I be cheating by doing that?

I can tell you I get a very good fog that takes up the entire chamber. Our chamber is about 5 feet deep and about 4 feet x 6 feet in width/length.

Any tips would be appreciated.

Thanks.

 

[swall]

I have an Auto Technolgies salt fog cabinet and had experiences similar to yours with the collection rates. I was able to get them closer to equal by adjusting the throttling holes and playing around with the postion of the dispersion tower and it's orientation. I was able to get both collection bottles within the desired collection range but the far one was always lower. One thing I noticed was that the feed tubing from the factory was a tad short, which didn't put the dispersion tower in the exact center of the cabinet. I never got to the point where I tried lengthening them, however.

 

[omenous]

Thanks for the response.

My tower is in the center. What are the Throttling holes?

When you say play around with the tower and its orientation.. could you elaborate? Our tower has an inverted cone at the top so in theory I suppose the fog evenly distributes.

 

[swall]

The tube part of the tower fits into a base on top of the internal reservoir. The tube base flange has a hole and set screw. By loosening the set screw and rotating the tower tube,you can uncover the hole in the tower. How much it is uncovered affects the fog dispersion. Do you have an Auto Technolgy cabinet? If so, I would call them and get a manual. Adjustment of the inverted cone will effect the collection rate also, although I am not sure it affects the evenness of the dispersion. Like I said, you have to play with it--it is not exactly a six sigma device.