huehnerhose
Hi,
I bought a bottle of APH09 last year and haven’t used it much... I picked it up again yesterday and it looks slightly bulged and feels very stiff... when I press it, it cracks and I get the feeling an emulsion of ‘something’ has built up on the inside of the bottle – I haven’t had a chance to just tip the stuff out and see if there’s anything floating around in there...
How long is it supposed to last? I sealed the bottle with inert gas, but I don’t necessarily think that prevents ‘something’ from crystallising...
If there really is something floating around in there, can I just stir it in whilst heating it up and then use it again?
Many thanks in advance...
FrankJBeckmann
Hi,
APH09 should keep for several decades. If there are any small lumps floating around in it, you might want to filter them out so they don’t stick to the film. If they’re just sitting at the bottom of the bottle, you can simply ignore them.
cfb_de
Hi there,
On top of that: the cheapest LDPE bottles used today—unfortunately for environmental and cost reasons*]—are anything but durable.
Okay: it would be cheaper to bottle it in Aponorm bottles. But what consumer wants their developer in (perfectly serviceable!) bottles with a pharmacy logo on top?
R09/Rodinal (yes, even Rodinal in a plastic bottle!) is a wonderful example of how modern ‘environmentally friendly’ packaging *falls short* of the shelf life of its contents by several decades.
That old Rodinal in the brown borosilicate bottle from Größer (complete with the Imperial Eagle on the label) survived for over 50 years in the attic with a waxed cork. I used it all up and then sold the empty bottle (which is no longer classified as hazardous goods for shipping, as I’d learnt from the shipment of fresh Rodinal to the Philippines) at a profit to a collector in the USA.
My Rodinal, purchased cheaply from the Agfa clearance sale (before Stapelfeld wore the hard cap), is also in borosilicate bottles with waxed corks and shellac coating on the outside. What was good in 1941 can’t be bad in 2005. And if you can then decant it inertly at home... you win twice over. My next Rodinal order is expected in 2030; by then, the formula will have long since been disclosed.
In doing so, I’ve delayed Agfa’s insolvency by a few seconds and driven up the price of the Vaihingen plant by a few cents :-) I’m happy to admit it.
Best regards,
Franz
*] In fact, LDPE bottles are initially cheaper for the manufacturer. However, if one considers the entire process chain required for inert bottling, the picture quickly changes due to a lack of vacuum resistance. Thanks to departmental controlling, such things make our hobby artificially more expensive. Thanks to ERP systems such as SAP, manufacturers can no longer set a price per product across their entire process chain, but only across all cost centres/PSP elements/accounting rules involved in the product development process. The cost centres ‘Production’, ‘Container Purchasing’, ‘Raw Chemicals Purchasing’, ‘Filling’, ‘Dispatch’ and ‘Customer Scare Management’ are, unfortunately, viewed separately these days rather than in terms of product-related value creation.
In fact, however, a single-use LDPE bottle *is* more environmentally friendly than a glass bottle: crude oil is *first* used to make a product and *then* incinerated. There is no need for the transport of heavy empty containers, nor for the enormous energy required to heat a glass recycling melt.
It is best to reuse the local glass bottle at home yourself. For example, to fill the next batch of Rodinal you buy. The pharmacy logo on the lid doesn’t bother you either. And indeed, suitable laboratory bottles with Aponorm collar lids are really good value, affordable and cheap at the pharmacy. Even here in Sindelfingen, the litre bottle costs less than two exchange tokens.
huehnerhose
Great, thanks... I was worried that something "important" might be settling at the bottom and I might end up throwing the bottle (and its contents) away... that would have made me cry, as I’d only just bought the APH09 because it promises a long shelf life :ph34r: (Just like the Diafine solution standing next to it)
I suppose I’ll just have to sit down with the filter paper, funnel and Aponorm again :D
Regards
Sebastian
