Ammonium breakdown

[smackdab]

I'm reading sometimes one can have ammonium when opening a pool and it takes a lot of chlorine to remove it. My question is how many ppm of FC does it take to remove 1ppm of ammonium?

Just curious about the load on FC.

 

[Richard320]

I knew I read it somewhere. I did a little searching and found this thread

For every 10 ppm CYA that is decomposed, it produces around 3.3 ppm ammonia (measured as ppm Nitrogen) and would require around 30 or so ppm FC to get rid of it.

 

[JasonLion]

Actual chlorine required is often higher than that, because you lose chlorine to other things, not just breaking down the ammonia.

 

[smackdab]

I realize there would be other things to lose chlorine to in the above mentioned case, but theoretically just wondering what the FC amount required to breakdown the ammonium and not other things.

I guess I should have said "ammonia" in my post but what about "ammonium"? Does it work out about the same or more or less?

I see ammonia is NH3 and ammonium is NH4 and I can see it would change his chemical equations but have no ideal to what or even if it would matter.

 

[chem geek]

Ammonium ion (NH₄⁺) is in equilibrium with ammonia (NH₃) where at usual pool pH it's mostly ammonia. It takes the same amount of chlorine to get rid of either. The reaction rate is effectively the same for either as well because it's hypochlorous acid reacting with ammonia, but when the pH goes up there's more ammonia but less hypochlorous acid, and vice versa.

 

[smackdab]

Thanks.