Anti-Fogging Treatments for New Masks. (a comparison of techniques)

[lowviz]

@RayfromTX: No worries. I'm no stranger to passionately held hypotheses that are directly counter to each other. This reminds me of peer-reviewed research and I love it. Keeps things honest. I would like to see a water-sheeting pic of your flamed-only mask before any defog. Post #355 shows interference fringes (sort of like a rainbow) as the water drains off of a freshly ammonia-treated lens in an incredibly thin sheet without any defog.

All,
I'm currently going through endless excerpts from this thread and how to answer them with respect to what we have all found in our own experimentation and existing literature. I'll post as soon as I can. Maybe I'll answer in manageable blocks starting tonight...

.................................................................................................................................
(sneak peek)
Any un-cited text in italics is a direct quote from F. M. Ernsberger, Properties of Glass Surfaces. PPG Industries, Inc. 1972. This can be found at www.annualreviews.org Annu. Rev. Mater. Sci. 1972.2:529-572. It is a free download.

P002:

All masks are different. Some require a higher level of treatment than others. Some need no treatment at all.

"In concluding this discussion of glass structure, let me emphasize that there is no such thing as the structure of glass. No two glass compositions behave precisely alike; and for a given composition, the microstructure will be determined in an important way by the thermal history of a particular sample."

 

[Pearlman]

(Emphasis mine.) So you have 1 data point and out come the snark? Well feels kinda snarky ...

Am i the first person in the world to use a flame on a mask? Wow I didnt know that .. must make me a pioneer!
I'm just glad and gleeful that a simple 2 min treatment worked for me long term and I didn't have to struggle anymore...

PS: Are you going to lose some sleep because you thought I was snarky? I hope you do ...

P

 

[stuartv]

As requested, I put my Deep6 mask back in my ammonia bath for 5 days (from last Sunday to this past Friday night). That made a cumulative 7 days of soaking. The mask was brand new as of 2 weeks ago and the only treatment it got was a run through the dishwasher before the first ammonia soak.

I did a 1 hour dive with it yesterday. The water was 51 degrees or so. I squirted some diluted Baby Shampoo in the mask a few minutes before getting in and then did a quick dunk or two in the lake water before donning the mask and starting my dive.

I had no fogging during the dive. After I got out, I walked from the dock to my picnic table, doffed my tanks, and then picked up the mask and breathed directly onto the glass of the inside of the mask 3 times. Still no fogging at all.

Time for me to pull out a bigger container and start several of my other masks soaking in ammonia for a week...

Oh, and I also used my Atomic Subframe ARC mask yesterday for a 1 hour dive. That one has the anti-reflective coating on it. I had previously (months ago) cleaned it thoroughly with Dawn dish shop. Last week, I ran it through the dishwasher and then soaked it for 2 days in ammonia. It it very hard for me to tell if the ammonia had any effect on the anti-reflective coating. Looking at it in a glancing light, it appears that it does still at least have some coating, but I have no way to tell if 100% of the original coating is still there or not.

I did email Atomic Aquatics tech support last week and ask about how to clean it and if I can use ammonia-based glass cleaner. They said: "I would recommend a 1/5- 1/10 (i.e. 10 - 20%) ammonia water solution over pure ammonia. This should not cause any damage to your mask."

So, I don't have any reason to think the ammonia affected the coating at all. Just for the record.

What I can say is that I cannot see any difference in the appearance of the coating from one part of either lens to any of the other. So, if it did affect the coating, it was completely uniform in its effect. And, the mask worked flawlessly, with no fogging on the dive yesterday.

 

[RayfromTX]

You flamed your mask and used sea drops gold, never rubbed it off while rinsing and your mask fogged? If that is true I will buy your mask. Please send me PayPal instructions if you are interested.This is a serious offer.

Your method does not work for my mask. So in our new sample size of 2, your method Is no better than a flip of the proverbial coin. Fail.

Now let @lowviz do his thing in peace please...

 

[RayfromTX]

I am posting as a member. If I post as staff there will be a modpost banner. As far as spreading the virus, I am certain beyond a shadow of a doubt the the virus is rendered harmless by soap because it dissolves the lipids in the virus. soap-coronavirus-handwashing-germs.html If this was not true we would be in a very different situation. That is quite off the topic of the thread but I'm happy to answer your question.

Are you really claiming (with authority as a staff member) and from a scientific standpoint,that this material kills the virus?

Spreading material from one mask to another, for everyone on a boat is something I would find unwelcome.

 

[tridacna]

I am posting as a member. If I post as staff there will be a modpost banner. As far as spreading the virus, I am certain beyond a shadow of a doubt the the virus is rendered harmless by soap because it dissolves the lipids in the virus. soap-coronavirus-handwashing-germs.html If this was not true we would be in a very different situation. That is quite off the topic of the thread but I'm happy to answer your question.

Do you know for sure that Seagold contains soap? I had no idea. I have a friend who works at GearAid. I will ask him.

You flamed your mask and used sea drops gold, never rubbed it off while rinsing and your mask fogged? If that is true I will buy your mask. Please send me PayPal instructions if you are interested.This is a serious offer.

You have not read this thread. If you had, you would have learned that my AA mask is no longer a problem. I had previously scrubbed, flamed and run it through the dishwasher to no avail. An ammonia bath solved my problem. I would not have known about this without this thread on SB.

 

[lowviz]

You flamed your mask and used sea drops gold, never rubbed it off while rinsing and your mask fogged?

There is a fine point in your treatment that I would like to address.

If it so happens that a really good defog (Sea Drops Gold) is able to make an iffy mask behave, then your initial treatment may only need to be good enough to allow the defog to work. That confounds the experiment.

This is why a minimally effective defog, baby shampoo diluted 1:100 with water, was identified and chosen to compare all initial treatments.

If you flame a mask and then defog with 'reference' defog does it still behave? Post #169 tells me that flaming is beneficial but far from a perfect fix.

 

[johndiver999]

I am posting as a member. If I post as staff there will be a modpost banner. As far as spreading the virus, I am certain beyond a shadow of a doubt the the virus is rendered harmless by soap because it dissolves the lipids in the virus. soap-coronavirus-handwashing-germs.html If this was not true we would be in a very different situation. That is quite off the topic of the thread but I'm happy to answer your question.

So that substance contains soap? I would have suspected that it might be a detergent

 

[RayfromTX]

There is a fine point in your treatment that I would like to address.

If it so happens that a really good defog (Sea Drops Gold) is able to make an iffy mask behave, then your initial treatment may only need to be good enough to allow the defog to work. That confounds the experiment.

This is why a minimally effective defog, baby shampoo diluted 1:100 with water, was identified and chosen to compare all initial treatments.

If you flame a mask and then defog with 'reference' defog does it still behave? Post #169 tells me that flaming is beneficial but far from a perfect fix.

The baby shampoo works on the flamed mask but the problem is it washes out more quickly than the sea drops gold. That becomes a problem when the mask gets partially flooded and cleared too many times. Unless you can create a mask that doesn't need defog then it is prudent to use one that works great. My wife uses a mask that has some sort of nano technology that makes the glass resistant to fogging but it still needs defog. (very very little). My point is if you have to use a defog anyway, it seems easier to me to use a good defog and then the mask issue becomes moot. The ammonia treatment seems promising. Thanks for all your hard work. I have thoroughly enjoyed following the thread from the first day.

 

[lowviz]

My point is if you have to use a defog anyway, it seems easier to me to use a good defog and then the mask issue becomes moot.

Maybe the mask issue is still not moot.

If the mask is completely seasoned then it will continue to be hydrophilic upon loss of all defog until its surface becomes contaminated.

Up to my neck in research articles, I'll most likely be using these: (for anyone who wants to read ahead...)

Properties of Glass Surfaces: https://www.annualreviews.org/doi/abs/10.1146/annurev.ms.02.080172.002525

Monitoring Chemical Changes: Monitoring Chemical Changes on the Surface of Borosilicate Glass Covers

Cleaning of Silicone Oils: http://esmat.esa.int/materials_news... New Materials and Technologies - Liedtke.pdf

Silicone oil combustion to form hydrophobic glass: (requires payment to download, only using the publically available abstract copied below) Transparent superhydrophobic surface by silicone oil combustion - ScienceDirect

Transparent superhydrophobic surface by silicone oil combustion

Author links open overlay panelKwangseokSeoMinyoungKimSeunghwanSeokDo HyunKim

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.colsurfa.2015.12.022

Highlights

Silicone oil was sprayed onto a hot substrate heated to over 550 °C.

A transparent superhydrophobic coating was quickly created by the spray method.

Abstract

A transparent superhydrophobic coating can be easily created through the use of commercial silicone oil and controlled combustion. In this simple fabrication, silicone oil is sprayed onto a hot glass heated to about 550 °C, resulting in the transparent superhydrophobic coating on the glass. The coating is stable at temperature up to about 450 °C, and against a saline solution and acidic or basic solutions with pH from 4 to 10. This silicone oil-based process does not require any additional solvent, further surface treatment, drying process or post-treatment process. Several applications of this process are exemplified through the proof-of-concept demonstrations.



pH of ammonia: Physical Properties of Household Ammonia

Cheat: Ammonia has a pH of 11.2 to 12, depending on concentration.