Retrobright ozone method

[exxos]

I've had Ozone in my US cleaner for over a hour now, heater at 60c, ozone going in 10mins every half hour ish. I don't think its going to do anything.

The only other thing is just to forget the ozone and try heating up the proxide I got last year in my US cleaner to see if that does anything or not.

[stephen_usher]

I guess wetting the surface of the plastic whilst the ozone is passed over the surface might help (along with a powerful UV source to catalyse the reaction. It needs the photons to boost the electrons into the higher energy shells to allow the reaction to take place.

[exxos]

I guess wetting the surface of the plastic whilst the ozone is passed over the surface might help (along with a powerful UV source to catalyse the reaction. It needs the photons to boost the electrons into the higher energy shells to allow the reaction to take place.

I will see if I can find a small UV light of some sort and try the ozone again.. I don't think we get enough UV from the sun in the UK for any of this to work.

[Neffers]

I don't think we get enough UV from the sun in the UK for any of this to work.

What are you talking about? Summer is the best day of the year...

[exxos]

What are you talking about? Summer is the best day of the year...

True!

[exxos]

I took this out of my US cleaner this morning, so it had been actually soaking in there overnight, I don't know if that had any effect or not..

It does look tiny bit lighter in shade... But it was a lot of effort and time for basically minimal results..

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[exxos]

I have had button soaking in ozone infested waters for the past few weeks.. And I can say this has definitely worked!

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Original colour of the buttons is at the start of this thread..

I had this in sunlight as much as possible, and every couple of days gave it a blast of 10 minutes ozone.

The experiments where I had the other button in a ozone filled bag, basically did nothing much, but looks like it may be a little lighter than originally .. I did not bother taking a image of this.

Going by previous results in my ultrasonic cleaner, as did seem to have some effect on the mouse framework, and not really sure sunlight is needed, but more the fact that the water was warm pretty much the entire time.

So the next experiment I will do is in my ultrasonic cleaner, I will try and keep the water reasonably warm and ozone injected as much as possible, to see if I can speed up the process as this took a fair few weeks since I started these experiments!

[exxos]

As a update, I just noticed something rather strange...

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The top section of the mouse was the one was placed in the ultrasonic cleaner overnight with ozone injected about 10 minutes... This part was just placed in our conservatory with the mouse button, sat on the table the past few weeks.. Initially when I did the experiment there hardly seem to be any change in colour.. Oddly over time brightened up on its own.. ?!

Still not the correct colour but it is obviously many times better than it was originally.. I will place this in the cleaner as well...

EDIT:
Oddly this mouse frame seems to be that the same colour as a button which had been soaking in the ozone water the past weeks

[PhilC]

LOL, I love the puzzled smilie at the bottom.

Am looking on with interest as I'll do the same to my lot of computers once I know whats the best method.

[exxos]

I have had (and still do currently) the mouse button and top case in my ultrasonic cleaner for the past few days. Basically just heating the water to around 65c and every few hours dosing it for about 20 minutes with ozone..

Currently there does not seem to be anything happening whatsoever.. So it would seem once it has been exposed to ozone in water, is simply just has to be left in fresh air for a few weeks for whatever reaction to take place which cleans up the plastic.

The test I did with the button in the ozone filled bag I think hardly did anything. So maybe the plastic gets charged with ozone, and it has to be exposed to just normal air for the reaction to take place. As to why this would continue on his own for some weeks I really don't know.

So I will leave the plastics in the cleaner for a couple more days. Clearly the heat aspect does not seem to be a factor. Also I think as the fresh air plastic and the button in the ozone filled water did not show much difference, it does not even have to be in water the reaction to take place.

Once I take the plastics out, I will put the button back in the ozone filled bag, and leave the plastic in fresh air's again. I suspect the ozone filled bag will not do anything again. So must be the ozone the somehow negatively charging the plastic, and it needs the air, which I assume is more positively charged which is where the action takes place.. The ozone filled bag will obviously prove this either way. Though I think you literally just has to be exposed normal air some reason after it has been soaking in ozone infested waters.

So the current theory would be if I could expose it to highly charged positive air, it may speed up the reaction. The only way I could possibly do this would be to literally charge water with the power supply and put the plastics in that the reaction or not..

So I think there will be some weeks before another update now, as I will have to leave plastics in air for a few weeks to see what happens first..