thefloatqueen
Bronze Supporter
Clarifiers - what are they?
- Thread starter tomfrh
- Start date
The blue cube ones are typically a mixture of a very high molecular weight polyacrylamide flocculants. The molecular weights of these polymers are in the tens of millions and they're quite effective at removing suspended solids but they're really bad for gumming up filters. Since the cubes are designed to sit in the skimmer box and dissolve slowly, they're pretty much always going to end up in your filter. In a sand filter they act as a filter aid by sticking to the sand and helping to capture fine particles but they won't come off completely when you back wash.
The HyClor salt active which caused some confusion further up the thread, is not polyaluminum chloride based nor is it polyammonium chloride. It's actually polyDADMAC based. That is polydiallyldimethylammonium chloride. It's a cationic quaternary amine polymer.
You pretty much never need flocculants in a pool as mentioned above. There are better options and that's coming from someone who has been developing, manufacturing and offering technical advice on flocculants for industrial water treatment for a quarter of a century, so I'm a fan of flocculants and coagulants, but they're not necessary in pools.
I do love reading SDS from some of these companies.
Hy-Clor's superfloc is a polyaluminium chloride solution. So PAC is an inorganic polymer, although it's probably more accurate to call it a highly complex ion. It does have a number of aluminium ions joined together. The second ingredient listed on the SDS is "Inorganic Polymers" with a CAS number of "7732-18-5". That CAS number is for water. So they give the impression that it's all active ingredients, when in fact it's probably 85% water.
Hy-Clor's "Flocculent" product. This is just alum. Aluminium (or aluminum for the americans among us) sulfate. The bit that makes me laugh here is that it's a flocculant. The word that they have used is flocculent. Flocculent is just an adjective meaning fluffy or wool like. It's a real word but it's an adjective. The flocculated aggregates that the product produces could be described as flocculent in appearance. The product itself is a chemical causing flocculation to occur and the correct word is flocculant. So these guys can't even spell the correct name of their product.
Hy-Clor's superfloc is a polyaluminium chloride solution. So PAC is an inorganic polymer, although it's probably more accurate to call it a highly complex ion. It does have a number of aluminium ions joined together. The second ingredient listed on the SDS is "Inorganic Polymers" with a CAS number of "7732-18-5". That CAS number is for water. So they give the impression that it's all active ingredients, when in fact it's probably 85% water.
Hy-Clor's "Flocculent" product. This is just alum. Aluminium (or aluminum for the americans among us) sulfate. The bit that makes me laugh here is that it's a flocculant. The word that they have used is flocculent. Flocculent is just an adjective meaning fluffy or wool like. It's a real word but it's an adjective. The flocculated aggregates that the product produces could be described as flocculent in appearance. The product itself is a chemical causing flocculation to occur and the correct word is flocculant. So these guys can't even spell the correct name of their product.