Sacon FZ revival experiment
So after using capacitor bungs to repair the rubber feet on two laptops, shown here:
https://www.badcaps.net/forum/showpo...&postcount=548
… and here:
https://www.badcaps.net/forum/showpo...&postcount=585
… I was inevitably left with some paper rolls and cans from the Sacon FZ capacitors I “sacrificed”.
The paper rolls from these Sacon FZ caps looked absolutely bone-dry. The idea then occurred to me: what if I put a few drops of water on there? How (if at all) would that affect these already-failed capacitors?
So here it goes.
First, this is how one of these bad Sacon FZ caps (in this case, rated for 16V and 470 uF) measured on my GM328 tester: no capacitance, infinite ESR… just completely open-circuit as far as the GM328 was concerned.
But then, after adding a drop of water… ta-da!
It’s not open-circuit any more!
Is this magic or what?!
Sure it still has a super-lousy ESR of 1.4 Ohms and a whopping V_loss of 17%... but it’s not open!
As far as the capacity goes, it’s almost in spec… for the next lower capacitance size (330 uF) 
. Well, better than nothing.
Now, of course that doesn’t mean you can just add a little water and expect these caps to work again. I already tried that, though not in any device.
As soon as I connected a voltage source on the cap (I can’t remember if 12V or 5V… but it was likely the latter), bubbles started oozing from the paper roll, suggesting the water was probably breaking down into Hydrogen and Oxygen (and the latter likely reacting with the aluminum foil to form a thicker oxide layer… or who knows?) In any case, the leakage current was horrendous. I forgot to note down exactly what I measured, but it was something in the range of 10 mA or so. It didn’t seem to go down much over time either, suggesting the water would probably dry out again, leaving the cap open once more.
And for more giggles, I also connected the cap backwards on my voltage supply for a few moments, just to see what would happen. Strangely enough, almost nothing changed – the cap roll still oozed bubbles / gas, if ever so slightly more. I then connected the supply back the normal way and left it there for a few moments. After this, I tested the cap once again to see if I did any damage:
Well, looks like I didn’t change anything much with the voltage charging/discharging and reversing. The capacitance did decrease a little… as did the V_loss (leakage.) The ESR, on the other hand, was still sitting at a steady (and lousy) 1.4 Ohms.
And that was meant to be all I did with this experiment back then. But now come time to post it, I figured why not dig out that particular cap and see how it’s doing. After roughly half a year stored without a bung, this was it:
So it didn’t go completely open-circuit this time, but lost nearly all of its capacitance again. Seems like V_loss goes with the capacitance hand-in-hand, though, as that has gone down too.
I then proceeded to add a drop of (hot) water again, and once more this Sacon FZ rose from its grave.
As you can see, the capacitance was almost back to what it was 6 months ago (just slightly lower), while the V_loss was in the teens %. On the other hand, look what the warm/hot water did for the ESR: 560 mOhms now. -WOW, almost worthy of being general purpose! 
/sarcansm
Since I forgot to measure the current draw last time while the cap was connected to a voltage source, I did remember to do it now. With a 9V battery, the leakage current of the cap peaked at around 12-14 mA and then steadily decreased and stayed at 8 mA. After noting down the measurements of the leakage current (~2-3 minutes with the cap connected to the battery), I then checked the cap once again on the GM328.
It seems like we have fairly repeatable results here… or at least with this particular cap. Both capacitance and V_loss decreased again, like last time. ESR did increase slightly, but that’s probably due to the warm water cooling off. All in all, though, it seems water can revive Sacon FZ caps for a short amount of time. I actually remember now I tried this many years ago, again with Sacon FZ. But I didn’t have an ESR meter back then, so I couldn’t report any results. All I remember is I had a Sacon FZ connected as a coupling capacitor on an audio circuit, and it wouldn’t do anything (which I expected.) Then I added a drop of water and… sound sprung out of the circuit!
Now this may raise the question: can this method here be used on something like a motherboard or video card with these Sacon FZ caps (if busted/bad) to perform a quick hardware function test on the device (under a minute)? My guess is: MAYBE. At least, with Sacon FZ it seems like it might be possible… though I don’t recommend it. My first such experiment goes even further back with CapXon - they remained dead / unaffected by the water. So YMMV. Of course, this experiment was purely conducted because I can’t let dead things be dead in peace, especially these FZ c[r]aps.
https://www.badcaps.net/forum/showpo...&postcount=548
… and here:
https://www.badcaps.net/forum/showpo...&postcount=585
… I was inevitably left with some paper rolls and cans from the Sacon FZ capacitors I “sacrificed”.
The paper rolls from these Sacon FZ caps looked absolutely bone-dry. The idea then occurred to me: what if I put a few drops of water on there? How (if at all) would that affect these already-failed capacitors?
So here it goes.
First, this is how one of these bad Sacon FZ caps (in this case, rated for 16V and 470 uF) measured on my GM328 tester: no capacitance, infinite ESR… just completely open-circuit as far as the GM328 was concerned.But then, after adding a drop of water… ta-da!
It’s not open-circuit any more!
Is this magic or what?!
Sure it still has a super-lousy ESR of 1.4 Ohms and a whopping V_loss of 17%... but it’s not open!
As far as the capacity goes, it’s almost in spec… for the next lower capacitance size (330 uF) . Well, better than nothing.Now, of course that doesn’t mean you can just add a little water and expect these caps to work again. I already tried that, though not in any device.
As soon as I connected a voltage source on the cap (I can’t remember if 12V or 5V… but it was likely the latter), bubbles started oozing from the paper roll, suggesting the water was probably breaking down into Hydrogen and Oxygen (and the latter likely reacting with the aluminum foil to form a thicker oxide layer… or who knows?) In any case, the leakage current was horrendous. I forgot to note down exactly what I measured, but it was something in the range of 10 mA or so. It didn’t seem to go down much over time either, suggesting the water would probably dry out again, leaving the cap open once more.And for more giggles, I also connected the cap backwards on my voltage supply for a few moments, just to see what would happen. Strangely enough, almost nothing changed – the cap roll still oozed bubbles / gas, if ever so slightly more. I then connected the supply back the normal way and left it there for a few moments. After this, I tested the cap once again to see if I did any damage:
Well, looks like I didn’t change anything much with the voltage charging/discharging and reversing. The capacitance did decrease a little… as did the V_loss (leakage.) The ESR, on the other hand, was still sitting at a steady (and lousy) 1.4 Ohms.
And that was meant to be all I did with this experiment back then. But now come time to post it, I figured why not dig out that particular cap and see how it’s doing. After roughly half a year stored without a bung, this was it:
So it didn’t go completely open-circuit this time, but lost nearly all of its capacitance again. Seems like V_loss goes with the capacitance hand-in-hand, though, as that has gone down too.
I then proceeded to add a drop of (hot) water again, and once more this Sacon FZ rose from its grave.
As you can see, the capacitance was almost back to what it was 6 months ago (just slightly lower), while the V_loss was in the teens %. On the other hand, look what the warm/hot water did for the ESR: 560 mOhms now.
-WOW, almost worthy of being general purpose! /sarcansmSince I forgot to measure the current draw last time while the cap was connected to a voltage source, I did remember to do it now. With a 9V battery, the leakage current of the cap peaked at around 12-14 mA and then steadily decreased and stayed at 8 mA. After noting down the measurements of the leakage current (~2-3 minutes with the cap connected to the battery), I then checked the cap once again on the GM328.
It seems like we have fairly repeatable results here… or at least with this particular cap. Both capacitance and V_loss decreased again, like last time. ESR did increase slightly, but that’s probably due to the warm water cooling off. All in all, though, it seems water can revive Sacon FZ caps for a short amount of time. I actually remember now I tried this many years ago, again with Sacon FZ. But I didn’t have an ESR meter back then, so I couldn’t report any results. All I remember is I had a Sacon FZ connected as a coupling capacitor on an audio circuit, and it wouldn’t do anything (which I expected.) Then I added a drop of water and… sound sprung out of the circuit!
Now this may raise the question: can this method here be used on something like a motherboard or video card with these Sacon FZ caps (if busted/bad) to perform a quick hardware function test on the device (under a minute)? My guess is: MAYBE. At least, with Sacon FZ it seems like it might be possible… though I don’t recommend it. My first such experiment goes even further back with CapXon - they remained dead / unaffected by the water. So YMMV. Of course, this experiment was purely conducted because I can’t let dead things be dead in peace, especially these FZ c[r]aps.
Attached Files
nVidia RTX 3080 TI, Corsair RM750I.
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