Strange white whisps in Xtol bottle

[Lauffray]

Hey guys

Does this look familiar to anyone ? what is this anyway ? It's the second time I see it. For reference it's a bottle of undiluted Xtol, stoppered, 1 month old and was stored inside a black bag in a closet.
There's some dried solution you can see on the outside of the bottle, I'm talking about the stuff inside

 

[vijayrff]

I don't know what it is but I get the same wisps in near full stoppered plastic bottles of stock XTOL (that I mix using distilled water). I use the solution anyway after giving it a good stir and it seems to work fine.

 

[mwoenv]

Looks like some kind of soft precipitate as opposed to undissolved powder. Are you making up the XTOL as directed, i.e., completely dissolving Part A before adding Part B? And within the temperature range in the instructions?

I have never had this problem and I have stored individual liters of stock in PET plastic bottles squeezed to eliminate air and stored in the dark for up to 6 months.

 

[Ronald M]

I would call Kodak, 800 247 2424 I think. Ask for Profesional Help

The container may have been contaminated

I would not risk film in this after all the work making the images.

Always use the same container for each chemical. Glass is better to clean than plastic. I got rid of all plastic in my darkroom decades ago Worth every penny
Specialty Bottle Company

I also use D76 which is very easy to mix so you know how fresh it is.

Since multiple people are having problems, it is likely a Kodak Problem that they already know about. They replaced all kinds of bad Xtol for me. I finally got tired of it, and went back to home made D76.

 

[Lauffray]

Thanks, I only use stoppered glass bottles and I don't mix the bottles between chemicals (that is, xtol bottles are marked as such and always contain only xtol)
Since it's the second time I see it, I was a little more careful this time while mixing but there was no change

And yes it seems to be a precipitate of some sort, given that the active agents in Xtol are ascorbic acid and phenidone, what would precipitate Xtol ? maybe fixer contamination ?

 

[besk]

I have had the same thing to happen. But used it anyway with fine results. I use distilled water and dedicated bottles to store my X-tol in at full strength.

 

[john_s]

My guess would be some impurities in the water or in the packaged chemical.

I mix Xtol in our local fairly good tap water and I get a small amount of wispy cloudy stuff that settles. It doesn't want to redissolve, but I suspect that it never really was dissolved but rather it would have been finely dispersed (insoluble) in the developer when first mixed and then it aggregated together. However yours looks a lot more than mine have ever looked.

Depending on bottle size and usage, I try to decant it off, so I waste some developer. It's not expensive compared to other costs of our photographic activities.