Chemical principals of resurrecting a phone dropped in water or salt water.

[fuzzybabybunny]

I don't really understand the chemistry involving corrosion of chips, contacts, etc when an electronic device that's turned on gets in contact with salt water.

The end result is a shorted out device, possible permanent damage, and lots of lots of corrosion, which I assume is either salt buildup from the salts initially dissolve in the water, or deterioration of the metal itself. I'm not sure which. Note that anything I say below can be wrong, so let me know how to correct it.

My current line of thought is that if your device falls in salt water, you should:

1. Immediately take out the battery. Don't press any buttons. Just take out the battery. Electric currents running throughout the device will hasten the corrosion and short circuit process. Short circuits can divert unregulated electricity to components not designed to handle the load, burning them out. The electrons in electricity combined with salt water serve to hasten the plating of conductive salts onto circuit boards and metal contacts.

Thus, you want to prevent the movement of electricity and the precipitation of salts out of solution that will coat your components and also corrode your metals. If a chip has already been overloaded, you're done for.

2. Taking the battery out solved the first problem. To solve the second problem you want to:

a. dissolve any corrosion or salt buildup already in the device (it's already there, guaranteed)

b. remove the buidups

c. dry the device

3. Ideally you want to flush the device with a liquid that will dissolve away corrosion, flush out the corrosion, and then evaporate cleanly, leaving your device nice and dry and clean.

4. If it got dunked in salt water, you want to decrease the concentration of salts that it's being exposed to. That means getting some distilled water or tap water in a pinch and submerging the device. Keep it wet. Keep the salts dissolved. Don't allow it to dry with salts left behind on the circuits. Pour out the old water that now contains some dissolved salts and soak it a second time in fresh water. Then dump and soak it again for a third time. Fresh water is generally not enough to remove hardened salt deposits and corrosion that have already formed.

5. Leave the phone in the fresh water and get yourself some denatured alcohol from a hardware store in the paint thinner section next to the acetone and turpentine. Alcohol will dissolve minerals and evaporate extremely quickly but it will not dissolve plastics or remove paint, unlike acetone. Denatured alcohol is used as a relatively long burning fuel and is very flammable. Use extreme care.

6. Pour the alcohol into a bowl and transfer the device into the alcohol and let soak. Agitate the entire thing to circulate alcohol around in the device. Mechanical agitations such as shaking or vibrating can help remove the deposits and dissolve them back into solution. If the circuit board is exposed you can use an electric supersonic toothbrush such as a Sonicare to brush off deposits. Pour out the alcohol, pour in fresh alcohol, and repeat the.

7. Take out the device and shake it of excess alcohol. Leave it in a dry place and the denatured alcohol will evaporate out on its own. Or leave the phone piled under a mound of rice to draw out any remaining moisture and liquid.

 

[shortylickens]

I am not smart enough to explain it. Even though I have LOADS of related experience.

 

[Suspicious-Teach8788]

1. Well yes duh. Salt water is very conductive so you want to remove the battery. It's not even just corrosion. It's short circuit potential that's the most harmful. Corrosion is a slow process (relatively).

2. Wash your device off. Get any salt build up off or any salt residue. Your device is fine if it's wet but no ton.

3. I wouldn't put it in a cup. You then dissolve the salt back into the water and you give it a salt water bath. You want to just start rinsing. Maybe you can soak it in the end. Want to be real good about it? Measure the conductivity of the water (if it's DI and it's 18 megaohm for example, compare after dunking your device in to clean it off).

5. What good is alcohol? IPA isn't for cleaning. It's good at degreasing. Acetone is your cleaner, but I would never risk acetone as its not as compatible as IPA.

The important part is to dry it off. Rice could work, but honestly I like having air. Blow air across your device. I put it in front of a windowsill and let it dry overnight with air flowing through.

Your situation sounds like the device was left in water for a long time meaning corrosion already took place. If you just drop it in for a second or two and fish it out, it's not hard to clean off assuming its still off.

 

[glen]

Rice is a myth. Ir rice really absorbed much water, you would notice it.

The way to dry a phone is to make a sling out of something like a dish towel, and spin it around so the water flys out.

 

[fuzzybabybunny]

1. Well yes duh. Salt water is very conductive so you want to remove the battery. It's not even just corrosion. It's short circuit potential that's the most harmful. Corrosion is a slow process (relatively).

2. Wash your device off. Get any salt build up off or any salt residue. Your device is fine if it's wet but no ton.

3. I wouldn't put it in a cup. You then dissolve the salt back into the water and you give it a salt water bath. You want to just start rinsing. Maybe you can soak it in the end. Want to be real good about it? Measure the conductivity of the water (if it's DI and it's 18 megaohm for example, compare after dunking your device in to clean it off).

5. What good is alcohol? IPA isn't for cleaning. It's good at degreasing. Acetone is your cleaner, but I would never risk acetone as its not as compatible as IPA.

The important part is to dry it off. Rice could work, but honestly I like having air. Blow air across your device. I put it in front of a windowsill and let it dry overnight with air flowing through.

Your situation sounds like the device was left in water for a long time meaning corrosion already took place. If you just drop it in for a second or two and fish it out, it's not hard to clean off assuming its still off.

1. Corrosion is a very fast process in the presence of electricity. Thus you have to keep your device wet and in fresh water as quickly as you can. Give it less than an hour and you have the potential of having a largely corroded circuit board. What causes corrosion, and what type of corrosion is present in dunking an electronic device in water?

Galvanic? Or is there electrolysis going on due to being exposed to electricity?

2. Washing will not remove already encrusted salts. Water is a good solvent but not a great one.

3. A bath gives the liquid time to dissolve encrusted salts. Plus you go through the process 3 times with fresh liquid.

4. I did not mention IPA. Not the same as denatured alcohol. Tons of people recommend cleaning circuit boards with alcohol.

 

[Raduque]

I've always used RO/DI pure water and Isopropyl alcohol. I've revived two older phones like this (one of which landed in my fish tank, the other in my dog's water bowl!).

Fun party trick: connect a bluetooth headset to your phone, dump the phone into a clean cup or bowl of RO/DI water and have somebody call you.

 

[postmortemIA]

silica gel is better desiccant than rice. You should have some lying around.
I did try alcohol + silica gel, but phone was only partially working afterwards.

 

[WelshBloke]

Doesn't soaking it for a long time completely eff up the speakers and screen?

 

[Thegonagle]

Fun party trick: connect a bluetooth headset to your phone, dump the phone into a clean cup or bowl of RO/DI water and have somebody call you.

Sounds like fun. You go first.

 

[Engineer]

LOL, just found this thread (Google search) after going out at 6:00am to get denatured alcohol (screwed up phone using regular alcohol which has 30% water....what I get for not reading at midnight). Now to let it dry out.

 

[Eyeless Blond]

The alcohol isn't as important as the deionized/distilled water. First priority is getting any trace salts off of your phone, which can draw moisture from the air and cause a short. This is what the distilled water is for; you can get a bottle of it at most grocery stores (and you can keep the rest of it to use when ironing your clothes; using distilled water in an iron prevents buildup which can transfer to your clothes). Wash/soak/agitate several times to ensure that all salts are dissolved off of the phone; if you have something to measure conductivity you want to change the water until you see it as 18 megaohm.

The alcohol is mostly there as a drying agent: a mixture of alcohol and water has a lower boiling point than the water alone, so it dries faster and won't linger in small nooks and cranies in the phone.

 

[Phokus]

LOL, just found this thread (Google search) after going out at 6:00am to get denatured alcohol (screwed up phone using regular alcohol which has 30% water....what I get for not reading at midnight). Now to let it dry out.

Shouldn't you know this by heart, 'Engineer'?

 

[Phokus]

So is that 'putting your phone in rice' bullshit or something?

 

[Suspicious-Teach8788]

1. Corrosion is a very fast process in the presence of electricity. Thus you have to keep your device wet and in fresh water as quickly as you can. Give it less than an hour and you have the potential of having a largely corroded circuit board. What causes corrosion, and what type of corrosion is present in dunking an electronic device in water?

Galvanic? Or is there electrolysis going on due to being exposed to electricity?

right but if your phone falls into water, corrosion caused by the presence of electricity isn't going to be your main concern. it's a short circuit.

because corrosion is still a relatively long process. frying an IC is an almost instantaneous process. by the time your traces corrode, you could've fried 10 million ICs.

it's galvanic corrosion. electricity adjusts the potential and can make certain metals more susceptible to corrosion.

but yes you should wash your device clean if you dropped it into sea water. once you rinse it even with tap, you're 100x better. at that point you can go buy some DI and take care of it further at that point.

I would not use denatured alcohol. IPA is more safe with electronics. Solvents like methanol have compatibility issues with materials. The issue with using solvents other than water is always safety and compatibility.

 

[destrekor]

So is that 'putting your phone in rice' bullshit or something?

Not at all.


But there are many variables. A certain trace amount of remaining ionized salts sitting on circuiting may not be harmful, but if you got it soaking wet, you may leave a fair bit of salts behind.


It's hard to tell, so I reckon it might be a good idea to fix it up a little more thoroughly. But in a pinch, dropping it in a bag or tub of rice for a fair bit of time should suffice.

I doubt, short of dropping it in a body of salt water, that there will be such a quantity of ionized deposits that a short may happen spontaneously in the future. Theoretically, it is quite possible though.


I had my phone on me during a brutal storm and was literally stuck out in the open (due to tornadoes in the region and no available proper tornado shelter during firing range operations), and I left it in my pants pocket. It didn't get drenched, but by time I realized it might be getting a fair bit wet in the soaked pants, I put in the pocket of the waterproof jacket. Which I closed up (I think with zipper).
That proceeded to make it a very humid pocket, what with a phone still turned on and producing heat. Yeah, it ended up dying.
I had the brilliant idea of using some desiccation packets from sealed food items and a bag of jerky, and sealing those up with the phone in a bag. It started working fine even after something like half a day. That was my Galaxy Nexus that was only three months old at the time, I was almost literally shitting bricks until I was convinced it worked out alright.

 

[Suspicious-Teach8788]

So is that 'putting your phone in rice' bullshit or something?

No. Rice serves as a desiccator. It may not be like silica gel or any high quality stuff they actually use in vacuum applications, but it's better than nothing. Plus rice is highly accessible.

I just question the ability of rice in cases where water has seeped underneath and inside cracks.

Say you dropped your phone and there's water behind the screen. Not sure if having flowing air is more effective or rice. I would personally prefer using a hair dryer or CDA or putting it in front of a window.