Goo coming from an ozone generator.

[WVNed]

I am running a Poseidon 200 ozone generator on my tank. It is producing a substance that is fouling the air tubing beyond the corona discharge call. The substance is clear, sticky, has a sweet odor, is immiscible in hot water with Dawn soap and combusts with a yellow flame and is very viscous forming tiny droplets that do not flow. The soap and water turn it white then evaporate and it goes back to clear. It did it the second time this morning. I saved the tubing from the first time and it does not appear to evaporate at all in about 5 weeks.

The first time I cleaned the unit, replaced the tubing and let it run outside to free air with a small air pump pushing air through it in the garage. It seemed to clear itself producing a strong ozone odor again so I put it back up and my ORP rose to 400 again.

I replaced the corona discharge cell this time. What ever is coming out of it doesnt seem to bother the tank or my skin. This time I caught it early and there was a lot less of it. The ORP had only fallen about 50 points.
I am running the air through desiccant beads. The standard answer is nitric acid but this substance has none of the properties of nitric acid. It reminds me of non petroleum lubricants in smell and appearance but it is slightly tacky to the touch instead of being slippery. According to Ozotech the cell is composed of ceramics and metals and there is nothing in it that could do this.

The unit is located in the fish room and not exposed to anything in the air beyond stuff I use on the tank and normal humidity produced by the sump system. No chemicals are stored in that room but fish stuff.

I welcome any suggestions about what to do about this. If it happens again I suppose I will look at other types of generators.

 

[reef lover]

Bump!

 

[Randy Holmes-Farley Verified Community Expert]

You burned it to see the flame color? lol

I don't know what it is , but I suspect either degrading plastic, or degrading organics drawn into it from the air.

 

[WVNed]

Well It's been a month and the goo is back. New tubing and coronal discharge cell, same result.
This tubing is from Home depot and is Clear PVC. The original tubing came with the kit but looks like the same stuff.
Here are the inlet hose from the dessicant tower and the outlet from the unit crossing. The inlet hose is clear.

The stuff is inside the unit
Again you can see the stuff pooling and the clear inlet hose.

More in the slack loops I made to catch it. 3-4 feet away from the unit.

PVC is supposed to be fairly good with ozone and degrade slowly. I expected to have to replace it but not every month...

I could also extend the intake to outside air. The only thing elevated locally in this room is probably the humidity. There is a large dehumidifier in the furnace closet on the other side of an adjoining wall with free air space over the partition walls. It reads 35-50% depending on what its doing outside. The room isn't a swamp.

Any ideas at all would be helpful. Should I source a different type of tubing?
This a common system BRS sells. I cant be the only one seeing this.

Help

Please

 

[Cory]

Wow crazy. I wish i knew what it was. I bought a used ozotech 200 and the black tubing it came with had this sticky substance on the outside of it. Does your have a sticky substance outside of the tubi g? Or just inside? The stuff you took a pic of looks like water. Is it free running?

 

[Cory]

I would try and draw air from outside and see if it stops the effect. Maybe its something in your household air. Could be dust or perfumes or laundry smells. And id also try running without the dessicant. See what happens. Lol a long shot but worth a try?

 

[WVNed]

I ordered some new tubing from BRS an hour ago, 2 different kinds for use with ozone. This all came from them as a complete kit that included the tubing, air dryer and desiccant.
The internet says PVC will harden, discolor and crack from ozone. It doesn't say anything about it liquefying.
The stuff in the tubing doesn't flow like water or even mix with water.
I have spoken to Ozotech people. They have never seen this before.
Now that it has been running a while my ORP stays near 400 with the unit on setting 4, not even half power.

I have turned it off and taken it down. Not sure what I am going to do. When the new tubing gets here I will clean it all out again and try something. Perhaps carbon on an outside air inlet.
What ever it is it doesn't seem to bother my tank. I am considering building a trap in the line and just catching it.

If you run this type of generator without the desiccant it combines the ozone, humidity and nitrogen in the air and makes nitric acid. You don't want that. I have 2 sets of desiccant and it changes color so you know when to swap them. Then you bake it in the oven to regenerate it.

Perhaps I can make small vials of it and sell it on eBay as Oil of Cthulhu or cencentrated efervesent sprits of goose poop for $1000 a dram.

 

[Cory]

I ordered some new tubing from BRS an hour ago, 2 different kinds for use with ozone. This all came from them as a complete kit that included the tubing, air dryer and desiccant.
The internet says PVC will harden, discolor and crack from ozone. It doesn't say anything about it liquefying.
The stuff in the tubing doesn't flow like water or even mix with water.
I have spoken to Ozotech people. They have never seen this before.
Now that it has been running a while my ORP stays near 400 with the unit on setting 4, not even half power.

I have turned it off and taken it down. Not sure what I am going to do. When the new tubing gets here I will clean it all out again and try something. Perhaps carbon on an outside air inlet.
What ever it is it doesn't seem to bother my tank. I am considering building a trap in the line and just catching it.

If you run this type of generator without the desiccant it combines the ozone, humidity and nitrogen in the air and makes nitric acid. You don't want that. I have 2 sets of desiccant and it changes color so you know when to swap them. Then you bake it in the oven to regenerate it.

Perhaps I can make small vials of it and sell it on eBay as Oil of Cthulhu or cencentrated efervesent sprits of goose poop for $1000 a dram.

Yeah i know nitric acid may shorten the life of your ozone cell. But id try it anyway because it will give you certainty there isnt something coming from the dessicant. How would you know otherwise?

 

[Gareth elliott]

We used to used burn smell to determine what fiber was when there was an unknown fabric at the university lab, cant say i have done this since lol.

By chance taken an P.K.E. reading? Yellow flame sounds like it could be ectoplasmic in nature

 

[WVNed]

I was reading about desiccant beads. I don't see how they could break down to anything. Silica gel and cobalt chloride. So stable it is used in packaged drugs.
I have not had access to much of it. It wont come out of the tube. It really doesn't flow. It doesn't evaporate.
It has an odor but it isn't offensive. It doesn't harm your skin or discolor paper it's absorbed on. It burns but doesn't flare. It doesn't mix with water, not even hot water with Dawn in it.
I may make a trap like used on an air system with a glass collection container. Let it run into that and forget about it. The ozone generator is working fine. I think the first time the generator shut down it had the air flow blocked by the stuff and then started working again. If it was going to kill anything it would have already.

Why do I always find myself in unique situations?

 

[Cory]

I was reading about desiccant beads. I don't see how they could break down to anything. Silica gel and cobalt chloride. So stable it is used in packaged drugs.
I have not had access to much of it. It wont come out of the tube. It really doesn't flow. It doesn't evaporate.
It has an odor but it isn't offensive. It doesn't harm your skin or discolor paper it's absorbed on. It burns but doesn't flare. It doesn't mix with water, not even hot water with Dawn in it.
I may make a trap like used on an air system with a glass collection container. Let it run into that and forget about it. The ozone generator is working fine. I think the first time the generator shut down it had the air flow blocked by the stuff and then started working again. If it was going to kill anything it would have already.

Why do I always find myself in unique situations?

The bottle trap is a cool idea. Id do that too if i couldnt find out how to stop it. i was also surprised at how quickly ozone destroyed plastics. Glass is best for ozone imo. I would turn of the dessicant. Why not try it what are you concerned about? Do it for the future of reefing! Lol

 

[WVNed]

The bottle trap is a cool idea. Id do that too if i couldnt find out how to stop it. i was also surprised at how quickly ozone destroyed plastics. Glass is best for ozone imo. I would turn of the dessicant. Why not try it what are you concerned about? Do it for the future of reefing! Lol

If I pull outside air in the winter humidity wont be a problem, I am considering it.

 

[Cory]

Is this goo cyclic? Does it take a month to show up?

 

[WVNed]

Is this goo cyclic? Does it take a month to show up?

No. It does take a month to make a significant amount.

 

[Cory]

No. It does take a month to make a significant amount.

Ok well i hope you figure it out because its not normal imo.

 

[WVNed]

“How often have I said that when you have excluded the impossible whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth.”


“The world is full of obvious things which nobody by any chance ever observes.”


The goo must be the product of me vaping in the house. So it is vegetable glycerin and propylene glycol that has been exposed to ozone.
I hope it doesn't make nitroglycerin in there.

I didn't consider this because the fish room really isn't in the house air circulation. It is ventilated over the top of a partition to a mechanical closet where there is a cold air return on a gas furnace and dehumidifier.
It doesn't stay at the temperature of the house. It is 8-10 degrees cooler in there than the house is this time of year.
While visually striking there is only a tiny amount of the stuff in there and it has proven to not bother the tank...
I will run outside to the desiccant intake and I suspect this will go away.

I am not as smart as I used to be. It hurts sometimes.

 

[Cory]

Yeah i vape too. I could see that build up over time. Sweet and sticky sounds just like vape juice lol.

 

[WVNed]

Yeah i vape too. I could see that build up over time. Sweet and sticky sounds just like vape juice lol.

I did a lot of things but I didnt taste it.



Maybe I can use these little face things.

 

[Mr4000]

I know this is an old thread, did you ever find out what that goo was. My generator is doing the same thing and i can see the goo in the outlet tubing and the inlet tubing is clean. I am running the air through dessicant so i'll try it without it to see if it makes a difference.

 

[Mr4000]

Also nobody vaps in the house and its a brand new home.