Electronics in Rice for Water Damage

[mindless1]

^ Yes some minerals may react with certain flux formulations to create a salt that increases the conductivity of the liquid in addition to the metal in it, making for a greater risk of shorts while power is on, and adding to corrosion, but if the device managed to survive until power was off and battery pulled if applicable, flushing the board to rinse that away is usually enough.

However on their own the minerals will not corrode metal. If they did then everyone's copper plumbing would disintegrate.

 

[silicon]

Blowing on it will only help if the blown air is dry. The rate at which the water evaporates will be proportional to the relative humidity of the blown air. The proportionality constant will be primarily dependent on the speed at which the air is moving. If you blow humid air over it, it won't do much.

what i have seen are small items, cell phone, cameras and the like, placed in a sealed baggie and the baggie is purged with nitrogen. nitrogen is dry, clean and will not harm the electronics.

 

[CycloWizard]

what i have seen are small items, cell phone, cameras and the like, placed in a sealed baggie and the baggie is purged with nitrogen. nitrogen is dry, clean and will not harm the electronics.

That's not going to do it quickly and, unless there's enough nitrogen in the bag (and the nitrogen has to stay in the bag), it may not dry completely.

 

[dkozloski]

Back in the mainframe days we used to run the data terminal keyboards through a home dishwasher and dry them by stacking them on a boiler in the boiler room. Now days I take stuff that has been dropped in the toilet, soaked with coffee, or soda or the accident de jour, disassemble it, rinse it off under the hot-water faucet, blow it off with a shop air hose, dry it with a blow dryer, and finish it by letting it sit in a dry warm place overnight. This will rescue everything from TV flinkers to laptops 99.9% of the time.

 

[alkemyst]

Back in the mainframe days we used to run the data terminal keyboards through a home dishwasher and dry them by stacking them on a boiler in the boiler room. Now days I take stuff that has been dropped in the toilet, soaked with coffee, or soda or the accident de jour, disassemble it, rinse it off under the hot-water faucet, blow it off with a shop air hose, dry it with a blow dryer, and finish it by letting it sit in a dry warm place overnight. This will rescue everything from TV flinkers to laptops 99.9% of the time.

Writers used to love (and some still do) the old IBM Model M. You eat on it, drink on it, probably do a lot more on it...but then could shower with it and it would work like new once shaken out and dried.

 

[Delited2meetU]

The device needs and or should be separated so as to allow rice contact full on with the circuit board/chips. Using air is dependent on evaporation of the water molecules embedded/absorbed into chips etc. Several days in bag of rice,a week or more if not separated. Immediately as possible too