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Cleansing Hardware Of Dead Pig Odors?
Chagatai writes "My company is one of America's largest beef and pork producers. Recently I took a trip to see a new computer room that had been built at one of our abbatoirs. While the new environment is nice and sanitary, the old computer room had air intakes that were adjacent to the rendering portion of the plant, and everything smells in an almost unholy way. Management is curious if there are any cleaning agents or means of deodorizing this equipment before moving it into the nice, new office. The only products I could find would clean the outside of the hardware, but the internals would still possess the lovely aroma of boiled dead pig parts. Of course, this is a race against time, as I am sure someone will inevitably squirt Pine-Sol into the system to try to make things better. Does anyone have any recommendations to remove the effluvium of post-mortem porcine matter from our machines?"
This has worked for me many times before, and I can vouch for it, but the obvious disclaimer is that there are a number of reasons why it's a bad idea, as I'm sure any replies to the post will inevitably explain. But it's worked for me before.
Power down all your machines and unplug them. Set up adequate ventilation (I use several cheap desk fans). Wipe down your hardware with rubbing alcohol using a lint-free cloth or a few old t-shirts; don't worry about your own, buy a big bag of them at Goodwill.
When you get tired of that, or you pass out from the fumes, just pour it in. Yes, I'm serious, you'll want to trickle it over the green hardware and get everything generally soaking. (Not the power supply or hard drive, just PCBs and the like. This is already a dumbass idea, so you don't want to be much more stupid about it.) Then leave, otherwise you'll probably pass out.
I discovered this trick while given the task of cleaning a friend's laptop. He smokes, a lot, and had quit and didn't want the smell. He also had sticky keys from God knows what, so I honestly just said "fuck it" and turned the laptop on its side, open, and poured rubbing alcohol into the ports, taking care not to let it get near the screen, which rubbing alcohol can damage. Using a lot of it allows the liquid to remove dust as it flows by. The excess flowed out the other side and into a few paper towels.
Rubbing alcohol is a great solvent and evaporates quickly, so the ventilation is more for the computers, not you. Make sure the insides are aired out before powering up, or you may find yourself battling a quick-burning alcohol fire.
Have fun!
This is one of the best ways to remove stuff down to the molecular level, and involves no chemicals.
It truly is "the hot setup" ( pun intended ).
Google "vapor cleaning" for more info.
There are activated carbon pellets that are designed to absorb odors. They do a pretty nice job of it.
I suggest cleaning up the equippement as best you can and then placing a few of these in or around the offending hardware.
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I'd suggest turning the 'puter off, laying the case on its side and pouring in a box of baking soda for a few days. Dump out the baking soda a few days later and blow out the residue, and your computer should smell remarkably "less bad." Mixing a little alum with the baking soda can't hurt, either.
The smell of a rendering plant will be hard to remove, but this is how I remove the "beef scent" from tallow when I'm making soap.
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What you need is an ozone generator. Park the equipment and the generator in a closed room for a few days, or weeks. Most ozone generators are built from a short-wavelength ultraviolet lamp in a box, sometimes with a fan. (Don't confuse ozone generators with negative ion generators. Ozone causes permanent lung damage, over time. Ozone generators also produce ions, but so what?.) The ozone will oxidize the aromatic organic molecules, over time.
If it's not too much hard work, then take them apart and wash them, hot soapy water should do, perhaps with a mild bleach.
As long as all the parts are *throughly* dry before reassemble, the water is no danger.
Once watched a sun engineer do it to an IPC after a colleague spilt hot chocolate into it...
Obligatory nitpicking: the word you probably want is "odiferous", not "aromatic". "Aromatic" has the specific connotation of containing benzene-style aromatic rings, which not all odiferous compounds contain.
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For organics (blood, fat) your best bet is an enzyme detergent (e.g. http://www.deconlabs.com/skincare/enzyte.htm). That will deal with anything on the surface. You'll then have to wash the computer down with alcohol (just a bottle of the spray cleaner) near any sockets/connectors or the water and residue left over will cause problems.
I D=10). That will contain any volatiles and save you from having to replace the plastics. Obviously you can't shellac the entire thing, but doing the main panels will help.
Chances are that not much has actually penetrated the plastics. If it has, then use a shellac based sealer (e.g. http://www.zinsser.com/product_detail.asp?Product
You'll probably have to replace the fans -- the lubricating oil holds the smells and there isn't much you can do about it, except to try and flush it away with more oil.
Beyond that... you could try adding a charcoal filter to the cooling system to deal with the remaining odours, but I've never done it.
Ozone eats certain rubber parts in your computer.
A friend of mine was having CD-ROM drives die every two or three _months_. Seems that his consumer ionizer was putting out enough ozone to eat the belts away. He stopped using the ionizer, and the problem went away.
My guess is that ozone would also kill off hard drive gasket seals and even certain types of insulation material.
Bad idea. Don't go here.
O3 will eat and destroy plasics and is 1000% stronger then clorine for a disinfectent...I work with water treatment and it eats and destroys certin plastics and metals Not a good choce for this espesaly electronics.
The few times I've had to "disinfect" computers and other electronics with "creative" fragrances, I've used pure (reagant grade) ethyl alcohol [in a well ventilated and grounded work space] with solvent resistant gloves, an ultrasonic bath of coating safe electronics cleaner, tupperware dishes and miscellaneous hand tools (brushes, ball peen hammer, cold chisels, etc).. Ball peen hammers are very useful for removing encrustations and cooked on stuff.. You don't wanna know. Trust me.
If you can replace the cases, do so. If not, dissasemble, remove power supplies, remove encrustations, and wash with bleach and hot water, then surgical soap and water.
Standard floppy drives are replaceable. Too much of a hassle to clean.
Harddrives are basically going to have to be removed, wiped with alcohol wipes, and then wiped down with some odor-neutralizing spray. Replace the drives after you get complete backups if any have errors.
Powersupplies, if not replaceable, should be discharged (those caps can kill), blown out with compressed air, and then wiped down with alcohol wipes.
CRT Monitors are going to be a bitch to clean. Replace if you can. If you can't replace, discharge all the capacitors, coils and the tube. Blow out with compressed air. Wipe down any sealed board level components and sealed surfaces with alcohol wipes. Don't get anything on any coils. Allow everything to air for 24 hrs before reassembly.
LCD monitors should be disassembled, their cases washed with alcohol. Spritz down the electronics with coating-safe board cleaner. Use monitor-wipes on the LCD itself.
Cables can either washed by hand, in a dishwasher (NOT HOT WATER! Max temp about 80F) or replaced. Replacement is easier.
Keyboards, if replacements are not available, should have all batteries removed, large encrustatios removed by hand (use gloves!), blown out with compressed air, and be run through a dishwasher, again with no hot water, or washed with large amounts of alcohol. Allow to drain for at least 24 hrs (alcohol) or 48 hrs (water) under a fan before reusing.
Boards: Remove any major encrustations of hardened tiss.. err.. organic matter by shaking, scraping, or chiseling. Soak in ethyl alcohol to loosen clotted material (in my case, literally.. again, don't ask) enough to brush/wipe most of it off. Immerse in electronics cleaner in ultrasonic bath on low. Board comes looking almost brand new. Allow to dry under a fan for several ours. Test, and reinstall.
Replace all fans and filters if possible (easier than cleaning the damn things). Reassemble. Before closing the case, hang a couple of those pine-tree shaped air fresheners in the case.
There are also a lot of forensic clean-up information websites out there.. Google is your friend. Hope this helps..
ACL Staticide is the stuff you're looking for. It is just as good as isopropyl as a solvent but is also an antistat... computer shops use it to clean computers (we use #1010 where I work). If you have any left over, you can mop your floors/clean your carpets with it to make them static-free.
And it's even cheap!
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Open up the cases, seal the room and run an ozone generator for 24 hours. Ozone generators can get rid of any odor permanently.
I worked in a large surface mount production facility. In the final stage of assembly, they would in fact go through a fancy dishwasher. Early on we didn't even use deionized water. They did switch to deionized water not so much for the fear of conductivity, but to not leave spots behind.
You want to put tape (waterproof - packing tape might work) over any speakers, piezo devices, potentiometers, dip/pushbutton switches. Remove any batteries and button cells.
Then stick it in the diswasher, I'd use electrasol. Also, skip the "drying" cycle and let it air dry. Where I live (Utah) the air is quite dry. It would be ideal to let it sit for a day in the summer sun. Then you are good to go.
If you are not blessed with dry air but humid air, it may take more than a day to safely dry before you can plug it in.
Under no conditions would I do this to vintage equipment, esp. tube equipment or even vintage transistor equipment. Old equipment will tend to crumble under the stress as old capacitors like to die (if they haven't already - google/get an ESR meter) and plastic will tend to crack. I would only do this for equipment from the mid eighties on. Before this time I would be judicious with the cleaning process. Like maybe not using hot water.
Modern components however are made to face a dishwasher, and can withstand it nicely, unless the components are defective to begin with (like some bad electrolytics on motherboards).
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They handle many nasty smell situations at beef packing and rendering facilities. Solution would probably include some enzymes to chew up most of the stuff and chlorine dioxide to kill off the bacteria, etc. They probably handle the odor control systems for stink exiting the plant too so there might be a tech at your plant every week or so who'd help you.
There are several other companies that handle this type of situation as well.
http://www.ashchem.com/ascc/drewind/
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Just remember to seal off the area during the process, and ventilate it well before re-entering as pure ozone can be just as deadly as carbon monoxide.
The picture tube is a giant lead lined piece of glass which contains a vacuum and doesn't hold a charge. What you have to watch out for is the capacitors on the high voltage power supply, which contain several kV of potential. And most picture tubes are amazingly tough (the older it gets the more fragile of course).
Our company still has wash machines for a few products that can't use 'no clean' solder flux for whatever reason. Almost every product I've designed went through a de-ionized water wash at some point.
Contrary to any widespread notion, almost every electronics component can survive being completely immersed/soaked in water. (It can even be beneficial, like when washing off acidic flux residues, or perhaps interesting smells.)
What electronics cannot survive is being -powered- while wet, as the shorts could cause currents that could burn out semiconductors. So, make sure there are no batteries, or even charged capacitors, anywhere on the hardware.
It doesn't hurt to be nice.
After scrutinizing everything else posted, I'm surprised no one mentioned MythBusters - particularly because they've used dead pigs on several tests - detect buried bodies when the ground, including sidewalk, is ripped up, bodies buried, and sidewalk replaced - stench bubbling up through.
... you can guess the response. They finally sold it for parts.
One episode dealt with the issue of "...can a car which someone died in be cleaned up enough to be sold again?" They bought a fairly nice Corvette (although the owner was a bit hesitant when he heard what his baby was going to be used for), tossed two dead pigs in it, sealed the car as much as possible, then stashed it in a storage chamber to keep it out of the way.
After some period of time (I don't remember how long it was), they donned bio-hazard suits & masks & set to pulling the car out & rescuing it (the car). Even with the masks on, it seemed pretty unbearable for Adam & Jamie. They worked pretty hard, using practically any suggested remedy they had heard of (and some of their adjunct folklore consultants).
IIRC, they brought in a specialty firm to look at the situation. The owner didn't have any "assistance" for dealing with it (no suit, no mask, seemed unaffected -- they didn't say if he was one of those without a sense of smell). Anyway, his crew spent a lot of time using their proven techniques and nothing worked. They finally stripped the car of anything capable of holding an odor: hard & soft plastic, foam, straps, you name it. By the time they were done, all which was left was metal.
Finally, it was time to [try to] sell it. People were rather inquisitive (regarding price and why they were so coy) and of course, the windows were up so as not to provide any advance notice to a prospect what might be lurking. Every time the door opened, however,