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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?"
Or maybe a little bowl of baking soda in each case. :-) The ozone's probably better though.
Haida Manga
A commercial ozone generator should work. I've used them on used cars owned by sweaty curry eating smokers, and it works great. The car smells like a meadow after a thunder storm after treatment.
A question whose answer cannot be found by googling.
Truly a worthy "Ask Slashdot".
That man tried to kill mah Daddy
I had a problem somewhat like this at one point. In my case it wasn't pig odor but my solution should help.
The first thing I did was to pull the systems apart and to lay each interface card separate from eachother. I then used denatured alcohol to clean each card. I did the same thing for the motherboard and the rest of the components that would be harmed by more invasive cleaning methods.
The cases themselves(sans power supplys) were cleaned using pinesol, then alcohol to make sure all the residue of the pinesol would be removed.
Once I was done, I layed everything out on an anti-static mat and aimed a high powered fan at them to air everything out for any further odor that could be detected.
This wasn't a perfect solution, but it cut the smell down by at least 95% and prevented the parts from being at high risk for damage.
Throw it in the dishwasher. No seriously.
"I use a Mac because I'm just better than you are."
Actually it doesn't matter whether it is conductive or not. The real idea is to keep it powered down while it is still wet.
There are sometimes capacitors on circuit boards.
There are sometimes batteries on circuit boards - for example to keep track of the wall clock time when the machine is off.
How do you ensure there is no risk of shorts when those two items are present?
Don't label something "offtopic" unless you know the topic well enough to tell what's on topic.
Isopropyl Alcohol (Rubbing Alcohol): This attacks some plastics. Figure out what kind of plastic the Socket for the CPU is made of, and then look up the chemical compatibility of that plastic with Isopropyl Alcohol. Repeat for all the other plastics which are in the computer. Don't forget, we are talking about immersion of all the parts into a giant VAT of Alcohol. You are not going to get anywhere trying to wipe the system with Q-tips or wipes.
Ozone. O3. This is harmfull to humans, causes respiratory problems. It is used to salvage expensive items which smell of smoke. The "ITEM" is put into a sealed chamber and Ozone is put in at high concentrations. Find out if Ozone will Oxidize the electical connections in the PC (you know, like where the RAM plugs in :)
The Solution: In the good old days, you would take the pc apart, and have the pieces vapor degreased using one of the CFCs that are now banned.
Nowdays, you are going to have to use some sort of water based wash, which is how computer parts in the USA are now cleaned. I'm sure if you ship them to Russia or India they are still using CFCs for this kind of work.
If you are serious about making this work, you are going to have to strip down the system completely, take out the ram, cpu, every connection which is going to trap water and not dry out properly before the corrosion starts on the contacts. Get some of the correct detergent for washing PC boards after soldering to remove flux, dip and agitate the parts in the (heated) detergent solution, rinse with clear water, dry in an oven, (or your attic in the summer for a week), reassemble, etc.
Whatever you do, don't just go slatering on rubbing alcohol, or other stuff which has not been tested and used on PC boards.
Don't immerse the disk drives, either, just wipe them down.
Here is a Google Link to get you started .
This is a serious amount of work, so I hope these systems are worth the labor that you are going to put into it.
Hope you were joking about that. Alcohol will float on the water, just like oil.
Now, I *think* you can still use water, but *very* carefully, wetting things to make it more difficult for them to catch fire, spraying water from above. If you flood the area it could get much worse.
I think you are mixing up three different kinds of alcohol. One is a mixture of Ethyl and Methyl alcohol, used as fuel and for some specific cleansing applications, which is extremely poisonous. Ethanol is the common alcohol in beverages, but Methanol can get you blind in low doses and kill you in higher ones.
The second type is the rubbing alcohol used in some countries other than the U.S. It's 70% ethanol, and the rest is water and another substance that I can't recall. The third substance is added to give the mixture a horrible taste so drunkards won't consume it. This rubbing alcohol isn't more toxic than 70% ethanol, and some alcoholics actually drink it mixing it with sweet juices/sodas! (Yuck!)
The third type is isopropyl alcohol, used in many other countries, including the U.S. In moderate amounts it is not toxic (of course if drink a lot it will harm you, but also too much ethanol will kill you). It is used because it has the same disinfectant properties as Ethanol, but it smells and tastes nasty so people don't feel compelled to drink it. If I'm not wrong, it doesn't get you drunk so there is no point on trying it (and that is the reason it is favored over the ethanol rubbing alcohol).
My point is that is isopropyl alcohol was poisonous it wouldn't be used to disinfect wounds, or even as rubbing alcohol.
Just vent the air from the Power Supply fans back into the Pig plant. Then have a intake for fresh air- cleaning the systems is too much trouble- your room will smell like Pigs feet in two weeks anyway unless you guys wear booties and bunny suits walking around anyway -- two cents!
But as for doing this job inside, NO WAY! . Not unless you have access to a fume hood. The LAST thing you want to do is poison yourself with the fumes.
Umm... Isopropyl alcohol is not particularily toxic. The risk of injury from inhaling fumes is almost non-existant. You'd have to be huffing the stuff for a long time.
Isopropyl is about as toxic as ethanol. And we drink that stuff. (MSDS data sheets for isopropyl and ethyl alcohol.)
Note the Occupational Exposure Limit is about a 1 kg/m3 for both. That's a lot.
The fire hazard is of course a real risk.
(Yes, I am a chemist.)
Sure, dead pig flavored jello wouldnt be that bad. I love dead pig! Of course, I don't call it that. Instead, I eat stuff called "Ham", "Bacon", and "Ribs", amoung any other fine cuts of meat that comes from dead pigs.
...Had this been an actual emergency, we would have fled in terror, and you would not have been informed.