Bromide oxidizer - Chlorine vs Bleach

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Yellow-Snow

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Feb 23, 2017
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Louisiana
Bromide oxidizer - Chlorine vs Bleach

I did a lot of reading about oxidizing bromide and some reason I thought I read chlorine acts a slightly different then bleach when you add it to the hot tub. Sure they both oxidize the bromide ions into hypobromous acid but they have different properties that might be better at breaking down (x)?

Is there any difference in the 2 when using them as an oxidizer/sanitizer?
Should I alternate them every time I shock my hot tub?
Can I mix the 2?
 
What do you mean by "chlorine" versus bleach? Bleach is sodium hypochlorite. It's always sold as a dilute liquid mixture (3%-15% with standard laundry bleach being 8.25% sodium hypochlorite). "Chlorine" is a gas (Cl2) which you would likely have no access to as it would be incredibly dangerous to handle without the proper environmental controls and personal-protective equipment.

Any form of stabilized chlorine (dichlor, trichlor, liquid chlorine bleach, cal-hypo and lithium hypochlorite) will become the same "thing" when added to a body of water - a mixture of hypochlorous acid (HOCl) and hypochlorite anion (OCl-). It is those active forms of chlorine that oxidize the bromide into bromine.
 
JoyfulNoise said:
What do you mean by "chlorine" versus bleach? Bleach is sodium hypochlorite. It's always sold as a dilute liquid mixture (3%-15% with standard laundry bleach being 8.25% sodium hypochlorite). "Chlorine" is a gas (Cl2) which you would likely have no access to as it would be incredibly dangerous to handle without the proper environmental controls and personal-protective equipment.

Any form of stabilized chlorine (dichlor, trichlor, liquid chlorine bleach, cal-hypo and lithium hypochlorite) will become the same "thing" when added to a body of water - a mixture of hypochlorous acid (HOCl) and hypochlorite anion (OCl-). It is those active forms of chlorine that oxidize the bromide into bromine.
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Liquid chlorine you get from the pool store. I'm going to go ahead and think its the same thing then. I'm an idiot or maybe just read to much wrong information.
 
Yeah, liquid chlorine from the pool store is just the branding they use to describe high strength bleach - typically 10% or 12.5% sodium hypochlorite. There are some other very minor differences in how it sold (weight percent versus volume percent) BUT they are essentially the same thing.

What you may have read is that chlorine can oxidize bromide into bromine but so too can an ozone generator on a hot tub. Ozone is an oxidizer too and will convert bromide into bromine. Ozone and chlorine react differently with bather waste and so sometimes there can be minor differences in how efficiently one or the other will reactivate bromine, but it's not something the basic hot tub owner/user would ever really be aware of or care about. As long as you are maintaining the appropriate total bromine levels and keeping the pH and TA of the hot tub in spec, you'll be fine.

TFP tends to stress the use of chlorine in hot tubs over bromine but that is mainly a cost issue. It's a lot cheaper to run a hot tub with chlorine as the sanitizer than bromine. But either sanitizer is fine for a hot tub. As always, careful self-testing and dosing the water with just the most basic chemicals it needs is the key to a happy hot tub...staying away from all the magic potions and too-good-to-be-true chemicals saves you a lot of hassle, money and time wasted chasing down bad water quality.
 
Got it! Thank you so much!!

1 more question I have from my research that I didn't find anywhere...

Can I over shock my hot tub and just wait for the levels to get back down?

Say 2 people get in after playing a sport (tennis or sand vball / I use my tub for muscle relief) and I know I wont use it for 2-3 days. Is there any harm in adding to much bleach? Say double the normal amount? If I give it time for levels to come back down I should be ok?
 
You can certainly "shock" your hot tub if you feel that the water may have an excess of bather waste in it, but it is not usually something you should on a regular basis. Adding too much chlorine all at once can sometimes have an undesirable effect of damaging the more sensitive parts of the tub (pillows, tub shell color fading, etc). Also, very high sanitizer levels will create more disinfection by-products (DBPs) including the more irritating trihalomethanes (THMs). It is best to keep the tub sanitizer level as even as possible. I certainly would not recommend you go higher than 20-25ppm on the total bromine scale - that corresponds to about 10ppm free chlorine which would be an very high amount of chlorine if there is no stabilizer present (cyanuric acid or CYA). If you do happen to "shock" the tub, then I would wait until your bromine levels come down to normal before soaking again. You'll also want to leave the tub open during shocking to make sure there is good exchange of fresh air over the water.
 
Yellow-Snow said:
Wait... to clarify I should be shocking the tub every time I use it and then maintaining the bromine levels when it comes back down correct?
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TFP doesn't recommend shocking based on a regular schedule. Properly maintained water in theory should never need to be shocked. Shocking would only be needed if there was some indication of high bather waste levels. Unfortunately in a bromine sanitized water system, the test chemicals can only measure total bromine and not the difference between free bromine and combined bromine (total bromine is the sum of free and combined bromine). In a chlorinated body of water you can measure combined chlorine (CC) separately from free chlorine and use the CC number as way of knowing if the bather waste load is too high. In a bromine tub, you can't do that so your only indication might be a bad smell or cloudy water.

If it's just you using the tub, then I would just shock it once and then try to maintain steady bromine levels. If others are going to use it and you think they may be heavily sweating or whatever, then you probably want to shock the tub after they leave and then wait for the bromine levels to return to normal.

Unfortunately some of this is trial & error to see what works in your specific situation.


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