Is this an \"Old Plumber's Tale\"?

Mike T., Swampeast MO

That the black water and black sticky and almost oily coating (NON STINKING) in an old iron system are good and help to protect the piping from further corrosion?

When I opened up some quite new piping in an otherwise old system yesterday I noticed this coating beginning to form near the boiler.

Al Letellier

black goo

You bet, Mike. That's all the minerals and oxidizers in the water that have separated and formed a coating on the metal parts. Black water is almost oxygen free and the corrosion is limited at that point. That's why flushing and purging a system every year is not such a good idea.

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tommyoil

Wow !

Who woulda thunk. Learn something new everytime I come here.

Alan R. Mercurio_3

I don't remember if it's in one of Dans books or an article he wrote. But I do remember Dan relating the black water to the boiler as being like a fine wine!


Your friend in the industry,
Alan R. Mercurio

www.oiltechtalk.com

DaveC

But if the water...

does have an odor, is that an indication of something not right with the system?

Mike T., Swampeast MO

A while back Hot Rod said that a sulfrous odor is indication of some sort of organism consuming the piping.

DaveC

Would that organism need...

a continuous supply of oxygen to thrive in there, I wonder?

Mike T., Swampeast MO

Am pretty certain it was from a thread regarding non-barrier tubing, so I'd assume that it's NOT an anaerobe (anaerobic organisms don't need oxygen to live).

Patchogue Phil_27

nasty odor

What about a nasty odor, like really rotten saurkraut?

Aidan (UK)

Biofilms

Pseudomonas aeruginosa, produces biofilms, slime.

A Google search for "pseudomonas heating pipes" produced loads of hits, including

http://ehp.niehs.nih.gov/docs/1998/106-12/innovations.html

"Biofilms wreak havoc in industrial settings, corroding everything from water pipes to computer chips. Some bacteria in biofilms convert sulfur to hydrogen sulfide, which burns holes in metals and concrete. Biofilms also plug pipes, interfering with heating and cooling systems. Once an industrial water supply becomes infected with a biofilm, seemingly pure water can befoul the computer chips or artificial limbs that it was intended to cleanse. In addition to the direct problems they cause, biofilms can also damage the environment indirectly due to the toxicity of the chemicals used to clean them up and keep them from coming back."

"Biofilms secrete a sticky carbohydrate coating to protect themselves from antibiotics and disinfectants. Moreover, up to 40% of the proteins in cell walls differ between planktonic and biofilm forms of bacteria as a result of different gene expression. So cell targets for traditional antibiotics may not be present in biofilm bacteria, making biofilms notoriously difficult to kill. "The rule of thumb is that 1,500 times more of an antimicrobial agent is needed to kill a biofilm than a planktonic bacteria," says Costerton."

Also in the news today, a previously unknown life-form, like a mega-virus, found in a cooling tower in Bradford.
I'll post the link if I find it.

PS Link

http://www.newscientist.com/news/news.jsp?id=ns99993559

The microbiologist who first found this organism 10 years ago, Dr. Tim Rowbotham, retired from microbiology in order to "earn a crust". He now owns a small hardware store.

ken D

I was in an office building draining 160 condensate drain traps and blowing the rest of the tubing towards the drain. Pink slime, and/or milky colored infected nose secretion-like matter came out and chunks of rust or mud, etc too. The smell was sweet and acidic even, and my hands were in the bucket (I kept the scraper that I used to scrape clean the bottom of the mucky, slimy trap, and the plug for the trap might fall in there, and the leak lock I kept in the bucket, and maybe the channel locks I used to remove the plug too) where the condensate trap drained into and all that goo.
Is that the same thing you're talking about? or is it the ok stuff? It would look like a slimy film. Also after opening one of the pipes, it was 3/4 full of watery, slimy, pinkish gooey chunks and slime.
I woke up one night (I was there for 3 weeks doing this), and I thought I might be getting an infection in my throat, I drank water and was fine the next morning though.

3 weeks, but didn't feel like breaking my routine and do it differently.

Serious here. We should be more careful. I was gonna get the stuff on my hands anyway, so didn't care if my tools were in that bucket. I tend to be an overdoer, too strong a sense of duty for my own good probably. Company man.