killian
Well-Known Member
Would I have anything to worry about if I store 5 gallons of star san in a keg?
yeah. Starsan is acidic. bad for stainless steel in the long term.
I use a 4 gallon plastic water cube.
arrowhead (po' boys better bottle) work killer for starsan
Anyone got an english translation?
Anyone got an english translation?
Does starsan do anything to plastic? I have some in an ale pail at the moment.
Northern Brewer says "It is safe for use on all surfaces, but use caution since it is an acid; contact with soft metals, rubber, and plastic should be kept to a minimum."
Is this just propaganda to discourage reuse and encourage buying more? Or are they possibly assuming you haven't diluted it yet?
Link: http://www.northernbrewer.com/brewing/brewing-equipment/cleaning-chemicals-equipment/sanitation-cleaning/star-san.html
I keep my StarSan in a white plastic five-gallon bucket. One day, I come down from my bedroom and notice that the cardboard I had placed it on was soaking wet. The bucket had been sitting undisturbed for at least a week. About the best I can surmise is that the StarSan, diluted, does weaken plastic, and that it weakened it enough to cause it to leak.
are you using the recommended no-rinse ratio of 30mL(2 tbsp) per 5 gallons? concentrated it is shipped in plane jane high density polyethelene (milk jugs).
does your bucket have a leak? where in relation to the fluid level, how long has it had contact, how big of a hole?
I'm no chemist, but it comes UNdiluted in a regular hpde #2 container. It doesn't eat it's way through that. I don't see how there's much chance of it destroying an hpde fermenter bucket or a stainless steel keg when diluted. I store mine in kegs - no trouble in over 2 years so far....
...so you're telling me that this didn't happen? You're telling me that I imagined the wet cardboard, the liquid all over the slate tile floor, the stains on the tile that got me bitched out?
Sorry, but I know what happened, and I can't explain it, but it happened.
...so you're telling me that this didn't happen? You're telling me that I imagined the wet cardboard, the liquid all over the slate tile floor, the stains on the tile that got me bitched out?
Sorry, but I know what happened, and I can't explain it, but it happened.
my guess is it affected the soft o-ring that seals the inside spigot 'nut' to the bucket.
Star-san says on the bottle its not good on real soft metals and other soft materials...like that rubber gasket.
Corny kegs were designed specificaly to hold dilue solutions of phosphoric acid.
Read the label of a Coke or Pepsi and look at the ingredients.
I'm no chemist, but it comes UNdiluted in a regular hpde #2 container. It doesn't eat it's way through that. I don't see how there's much chance of it destroying an hpde fermenter bucket or a stainless steel keg when diluted. I store mine in kegs - no trouble in over 2 years so far....
Polyolfins (and in fact many plastics) are sensitive to surfactants. ESC (Environmental Stress Cracking) is a failure of plastic when molded-in stresses are eventually relieved by a weakening of polymer-polymer bonds which leads to a crack. Those molded-in stresses are a function of the quality of the molding process (how fast is the mold filled, how fast is it cooled, the average chain length of the polymer, if the operator was still drunk from the night before, etc.) Exposure to surfactants can accelerate the cracking process dramatically...so much so that an industry-standard test method uses a soak in a surfactant to quickly test for stress cracking.
Since starsan is basically phosphoric acid and a surfactant, I could imagine a situation where long exposure caused a leak in a bucket. I can also easily imagine that one person could have never had a problem while another developed a leak, even if they were using a bucket from the same manufacturer. Unfortunately, there's really no good way to know if your bucket is more or less susceptible (although if you see visible flow lines or weld lines radiating from the gate region I'd be wary.)
The plastic top to my concentrated starsan container has cracked, so I've got some personal empirical evidence that starsan can have this effect. I store diluted sanitizer soultion in an older corny keg and would recommend that over a plastic container. (BTW, I r a chemical engineer and have had several not-so-enjoyable work experiences battling ESC in surfactant storage containers.)
So what kind of plastic is the Star San container made out of?
indeed.. diluted star san eats plastic buckets, but concentrated star san comes packaged in plastic...hmm.
indeed.. diluted star san eats plastic buckets said:indeed.. diluted star san eats plastic buckets, but concentrated star san comes packaged in plastic...hmm.
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