Empty Soda Cans

They all developed a minute pin hole ( invisible ) ..some earlier than others .. the earliest to develope a hole are completely empty the others contain varying ammounts of gas / liquid.

Why .. I'd suggest corrosion due perhaps to some slight contamination in your cooler.

Regards Woody

Agree, except since the contorl group (still in originalPacking did not leak) I would submit its handling damage that initiated the corrosion/weakness.

milo not logged in

Or,

As you know, the cans are very thin and may have sections that do not survive chem etching as well as thicker sections or sections protected by ink.

If, the can develops a leak at some point at either end, the escape of gas/soda would, in my mind, cause the can to tilt to the "full" end and drain the contents.

Like ballast.

Were the cans upright, or disheveled? Did you drain all the water, or most?

when the cooler was placed on the shelf it was dry inside the cans were some what disheveled as you put it. I regularly (except for that one for those couple of months) clean my coolers with a mild dish detergent and water followed by a light spray with a bleach and water solution to eliminate bacteria as per board of health requirements. I test my solutions to ensure that they are within acceptable PH limits. Usually I also try to be toward the lower end of the scale as I've experienced leach through on a few of the newer Poland springs water bottles. (You have to pay close attention how you store those because even being in the proximity to a closed bleach container can give you a chlorine taste to your water.) The part that I found very odd is that the majority of the cans where completely empty. I would expect half empty as they leaked into the cooler and therefor they should have sought some type of equilibrium. The only thing I can think of is that the CO² could have pushed it out but usually with a punctured can some of the beverage gets out and the rest goes flat. As (I think) the CO² has a smaller molecule than the rest of the molecules in the can. It at least is definitely smaller than the hydrogen molecules that are bonded to the oxygen and so forth. So how could the CO² push out the entire contents in the can? Also the CO² is captured within the H²O in the beverage. I simply can't see how this occurred. Perhaps though if the process could be duplicated some one could find a practical use for it.

I suspect the residual chlorine may have contributed to accelerated deterioration of the cans. Chlorine can be pretty nasty stuff, even in small concentrations...

Wow, that's really weird & I reading along, I was thinking Milo was right as usual.

It Kind-a reminds me of the times, I hired so many of those cute & young teenage girls, to be my theatre ticket office attendants & the money just disappeared , during their very short career of handling of it. All your profits could disappear too, if this keeps up.

I'd like to know how they stole it too !

Joe

What you have is a soda vampire... Is there a graveyard or recycling center in the area? If so, your only course of action is to hunt down the soda vampire by day, and drive a wooden stake coated with Nutrasweet through it's pop-top.

P.S. Don't forget to wear a church key about your neck for protection.

crimich,

The cans being empty of liquid and still having some CO2 pressure could be caused by osmosis. If the cooler water had some bleach in it the direction of osmosis could have been from the can to the cooler - since osmosis tends to equalize salt concentration on both sides of the membrane. This all assumes that the cans somehow became porous enough to act as a membrane. You could easily test this theory by putting some water in one of the empty cans and placing the can in a dish of salt water. Does the water move out of the can under these conditions?

Dave

The aluminum may have become porous by action an electrochemical reaction of the warm phosphoric acid in the soda and the external bleach. The lowest point of the can where most of the pressure weight of the soda is concentrated would deteriorate first.

Too bad you opened all of them. You could have held one under water in a bucket and detect bubbles escaping.

Hello crimich13,

Sorry to hear you are not well, hope you feel better soon!

I would think it is possible for any cleaner than may have pooled near the cans to have 'etched' the can perhaps?

A hard plastic Mat, which is sometimes used in a Pub as a drainer, which stops the cans touching any of the potential cleaner left on the 'floor' of the cooler. The action of 'Bleach' could have set up a mild electrolyte, enough to eat through the few cans you left in there anyway? Just a thought.

You really want to layer the bottom with a cm of hard perforated plastic to allow circulation, to prevent and liquid from building up and touch the cans.

See this blog entry Soda-Cans-Are-Really-Plastic-Bottles.

I think one of the cans was damaged when they went in the cooler: it leaked, and, the contents corroded the bottoms of all the other cans. When the leak is at the bottom: the liquid is bound to be forced out by the gas pressure at the top.

Check the "best before dates" located on the bottom of the cans. This problem has happened to me at a summer home and the cans were just in the cupboards (dry location). Some cans were partial empty and still had carbonation. I suspected that the leakage was caused by corrosion internally from the low pH soda. Something is wrong with the containers. I now discard all soda cans when the BBD is near (within six weeks).

I had some Jones soda that I left under a table in my cubicle for some months. All were in various stages of emptiness. Most had obvious small holes and all had thinner wall sections in the leak spots. Some had no holes. Only one can of soda survived, but I threw it away. Unlikely the cleaning lady sprayed any cleaners on them as they were in a plastic bag. My two cents.