I looked up a solution for this and I found that flipping the funnel upside down and adding acetone or ethanol would do the trick so I tried them both and it did not work.
After doing a bit more research I found out that soaking it in sulfuric acid would work and I would like to know if there is an alternative to this method or if this is the only way, what is the proper way of doing it ? Is the sulfuric acid diluted into alcohol or water ? and if so at what ratio ? should I wear gloves ?
Solvents can’t dissolve carbon. It needs to be destroyed through oxidation. Aggressive oxidizing solutions like piranha will render it good as new; it’s your judgement whether playing with such hazardous materials is worth the price of a new filter. I’d personally vote no.
Fill it with acetone and leave it over night then take an air compressor and an air blowing tip and blow it from both ends of the disk. Soak then blow from both sides again. It helped me.
You can have a glass blower bake it out in a kiln. Certainly not the average do at home or a local shop option for some folks, I have the great fortune of living in metro Boston where there’s a concentration of biotech/pharma including Fisher scientific and millipore sigma, in conjunction there are scientific glass shops, machine shops, grainger, high vacuum shops, etc. You should be able to mail it in somewhere if you’re at home remedies don’t work. Doesn’t always get it 100% but it always does a great job.
I use a chemical resistant spray bottle with a strong single stream. I blast the hell out of the dark spots until they go away. It works but uses a whole bottle or 2 of pure ethanol. This is after cleaning the best I can putting ethanol through the reverse end to back flush a little. Pack some sand really well to help prevent when building your column. Some gets through but packing the sand well really helps a lot.
The mention of piranha juice bears some explanation and a caution. This is a mixture of concentrated sulfuric acid and hydrogen peroxide, and it will oxidize your fritted ware. HOWEVER, if this mixture comes in contact with acetone, there’s a good chance triacetonetriperoxide (TATP) can be formed, which is a powerful explosive. There have been deaths from PJ being introduced into fritted pieces previously rinsed with acetone, so extreme caution here!
Bro I digged it up just like you said and it turns out I had already dug it and based on your input in that thread I went ahead and did it, flipped the buch upside down, put acetone through and it did nothing to the carbon, then I put 190 proof in the same manner and it didnt do anything either, thats why I started this thread, and by the looks of other peoples comments it seems like its not that easy to do, some people are suggesting I buy a new one, any thoughts ?
thanks for sharing