Cleaning 1

I wanted to investigate whether electrochemical cleaning worked well for household applications. I thought that if I used baking soda as the electrolyte in an anodic cleaning experiment that I could generate a lot of oxygen and carbon dioxide at the surface to blast the soil off. The carbon dioxide should be formed by decomposing the baking soda in the acidic region close to the surface of the anodic sample. So I tried the following experiment.

I added 2 tablespoons of baking soda to about 2 cups of tap water in a 1 quart stainless steel pot at room temperature. As a test sample I put Nutella on a stainless steel knife. I connected the pot and the knife to a 3.7 VDC, 340 mA power supply and inserted the knife in the baking soda solution. [The knife was anodic and the pot was cathodic.] Some bubbling occured but the Nutella did not instantly come off the knife, as I had hoped. Instead, it seemed to slowly remove the Nutella from the exposed edges of the stainless steel surface.

That did not work out well, so I added a few drops of dishwashing detergent. This made the evolved bubbles smaller but did not speed up the process.

I tried putting a thin film of corn oil on another stainless steel knife and inserted it in the baking soda/detergent solution. This removed the oil film after a few seconds of immersion.

Conclusions:
1. A baking soda/detergent solution can anodically remove thin films of soil.
2. Said solution cannot remove heavy soil (like Nutella) in a short time.

Further work:
1. Quantify the current density on the next experiment and see how it affects results.
2. Quantify the thickness of the soiling agent used, if possible.