How To Determine Ink Polarity

Since I posted about check washing, I’ve had some people ask about how to determine the polarity of the inks that you’re using and the polarity of the solvent. Unless you remember from high school chemistry (or work in a chem related field), you probably don’t know how to tell. I won’t put up a whole chemistry lesson, since all this can be found in any chemistry textbook or online.

The acetone in the check washing experiment is a non-polar liquid and dissolves non-polar solutes. So our ink would need to be non-polar. The only way to tell this is to just go and test different inks. The Pilot G2 Gel pen would probably be considered non-polar. Gasoline is also a non-polar liquid.

An example of a polar solvent would be water. So you can see why the inks are probably non-polar in their makeup.

There is actually simple ways to tell polarity. Here is a site with a very simple method to determine polarity. http://www.gelcandlemaking.com/section4.html

Links for more info on polarity:

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