Does Bromothane™ "Turn Acid"
Like the Old-Style Solvents Did?

No, you will not have an acidity problem with Bromothane™ because you are going to get the best technical support in the business from MicroCare, and we will teach you how to avoid this problem.

But Bromothane™ solvents can turn acid  you don't take our advice; sometimes this can get really nasty. (The chemical process is exactly like old chlorinated solvents as well as the nPB solvents from other vendors). The cause of this is the mixing of water or metals with the solvent, say, after a plating operation. Bromothane™ solvents have a "stabilizer" in the formulation to prevent the hydrolysizing of the water with the solvent. If there is too much water it will exhaust the stabilizer, which permits the solvent to become unstable and deteriorate into a bromine-containing acid.

An acid degreaser is a mess. The acid will actually eat away the internal surfaces of the machine. The acid will damage parts, create safety hazards, and even destroy the system if the situation is not remedied right away. Normally the clean-up also must include the cost of treating the inside of the degreaser to render any residual acids harmless. Plus, the waste disposal costs are not cheap! So don't let your machine turn acid.

You prevent this by topping off the solvent with some additional stabilizer. MicroCare also sells BromoBooster™, a concentrated stabilizer that you add to the solvent from time time to time. It's like "solvent Viagra" -- it gets everything running right, just as if the solvent was fresh from the factory. Sound familiar?

But when do you need BromoBooster™? Simple answer: when the results from an acid acceptance test performed on the solvent indicate you need to add some concentrate. The acid acceptance test is available from MicroCare as the BromoTest™ kit. The BromoTest™ kit contains everything you need to conduct the simple test. It takes about ten minutes once a week, and is as simple as being able to count drops falling from an eyedropper. A strong background in chemistry is not required.

Click here for details on the process of acid acceptance testing.

Special note: if all of this sounds like too much work, you have another option: select the Vertrel^® solvents from MicroCare. Since Vertrel^® contains neither chlorine nor bromine, it cannot turn acid. This means that Vertrel^® is very easy to handle.  

Updated: Dec. 21, 2004
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The term "Bromothane", "BromoBooster", "BromoTest" and the Bromothane logo are trademarks of MicroCare Corp.