Emulsion / development accelerators in surfactants

Lachlan Young

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{Moderator note: this thread sparked off of this post as it introduced an interesting topic in itself: https://www.photrio.com/forum/threa...-home-made-paper-emulsion.212918/post-2885104
The relevant bit of the linked post is duplicated below and some discussion has been moved from the original thread to the present one.}

What PhotoFlo are you using? The 200 & 600 (the Kodak Pathe Photo Flo was 600, despite not being named on the bottle) does/ did have a component that can act as an emulsion accelerator - and it is used as such in a number of Ron Mowrey's emulsion recipes to adjust contrast, along with KI and antifoggants.
 
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Raghu Kuvempunagar

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Is this component Triton X-100? Is it also a developer accelerator?
 
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Lachlan Young

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Raghu Kuvempunagar said:
Is this component Triton X-100? Is it also a developer accelerator?
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Yes, in some circumstances - and it was PF 200, not 600 that Ron mentioned as he preferred the lower potential toxicity of 200 (have updated above after rechecking references). I believe the PF 200 formulation was changed to remove X100, so if you buy a new bottle, you might need to do some experimentation.
 
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Lachlan Young

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Raghu Kuvempunagar said:
what are the specific conditions in which Triton-X acts as a developer accelerator
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Development accelerators can be surfactant/ surfactant-like compounds (e.g. Quaternary Ammonium compounds for example) or polymeric extenders - e.g. PEG, PVP, PVA, other polyglycols etc. You will find references to their mechanisms of action in the patent literature and places like Ron's book (and some oblique hints in the SPSE manual), but it's pretty obvious that they're sufficiently critical to final product properties that their use is still highly commercially sensitive today - and what works with one emulsion may not work as well or at all with another.
 
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