Gas Chlorine?

Jump to latest Follow Reply
You can not get chlorine gas in a tank as a residential pool owner, the supplier would never sell it to you. Chlorine gas is extremely dangerous and corrosive. Only a licensed business with proper controls can get them. Gas chlorine services typically use very high CYA (150ppm) coupled with high FC and high TA (dissolved Cl gas is acidic). It’s a very different methodology.
 
Motozoic said:
I'm assuming that procuring a tank of compressed chlorine gas and plumbing it into a residential pool filtration system using a computer controlled release valve would be a bit unsafe? My neighbor has a chlorine gas service and the water seems overchlorinated.
Click to expand...
Ah, Yes. Arizona Pima Chemical. I have a neighbor who uses them and if they would only do that 2x a week instead of once, I think I might not have done a SWCG myself.

I have been meaning to do a CYA Measurement of their pool for over a year now (they will let me)... It would be interesting to see how it's managed. I suspect they use a large amount of CYA and a large amount of Cl. Whether or not that's dangerous or not? It doesn't appear to be so far...

But I don't see where the concept of using Chlorine gas is super dangerous or anything. Probably in practice about as dangerous as Muriatic Acid. It's interesting that there is a service here who still does it.
 
Rattus Suffocatus said:
But I don't see where the concept of using Chlorine gas is super dangerous or anything. Probably in practice about as dangerous as Muriatic Acid. It's interesting that there is a service here who still does it.
Click to expand...

I worked around tanks of chlorine gas for many, many, many years. The required safety cabinets are impressive systems that use double-walled argon/nitrogen pressurized stainless tubing with about half a dozen automated gas valves, flow switches, and hazardous gas detectors. The control systems are all digital controls with automated recipes for venting, purging, priming and stopping gas flow. The cabinets themselves are actively vented with negative pressure maintained 24/7. There are both internal and external gas sensors. In any form of confined space, chlorine gas can quickly reach toxic levels.

Now in an outdoor environment you are slightly more safe but those Pima guys should be wearing full face chemical respirators to avoid breathing any accidental release of fumes. And if you’ve ever seen the backs of those trucks, they are rusted out worse than a northeast car after a good winter of salt spray.
 
I think if you look at my past posts you will find that I commented about their tanks and their trucks. Scary stuff indeed. If you get a face full of it, it's terrible stuff, but in the limited amount of research I found out that it's poison gas potential isn't as good as say, mustard gas.. so it really never made it big time as a chemical weapon. Careful handling for sure is warranted. Not sure they do that. And as far as them handling it, as far as I can tell all they do is put a probe down at the bottom of the deep end and let 'er rip....

Honestly, the neighbor's pool does look better than the trichor puck guys pools do, but not as good as mine... :) They are cheap compared to the competition too tho... I just don't know if I'd want to swim in the neighbor's pool for a couple of days after their treatment....

I've worked around liquid nitrogen a lot.. it's amazing how fast that can hit toxic levels in a confined space too..... But at least you don't get scorched when the O2 alarms go off.... The good old days with Halon... you might not even make it out of the room if that went off... O2 is instantly gone...
 
JamesW said:
Nitrogen is not toxic.

Nitrogen makes up about 78% of the atmosphere.

It just displaces the normal air, which has oxygen.

People can die from carbon dioxide or nitrogen gas if it reduces their supply of oxygen.



Click to expand...

Dang well I hate to double whammy Raticus but the myths about Halon are also just that, myths. Halon is not dangerous to be around. Usually you'd want to leave a data center if the Halon system went off within 15-30 minutes.
 
  • Like
Reactions: jseyfert3
Gas of any kind, toxic or inert, will kill you if it displaces enough breathable air. No worries outside in the open except for the possibility of accidentally breathing in fumes that can cause tissue damage. The point I failed to make is that a chlorine gas setup is far too dangerous for use in and around a home. There is no DIY Chlorine Gas injection, it’s simply too dangerous.
 
  • Like
Reactions: mguzzy, proavia and PoolGate
Halon isn't toxic, but when it reacts in extinguishing a fire, toxic gasses are produced. That is the reason for the exit alarms in halon systems.
I spent my career 40 years in the fire service, retired as Fire Chief, (thus the chief in chiefwej)
 
  • Like
Reactions: borjis, jseyfert3, mguzzy and 1 other person

Enjoying this content?

Support TFP with a donation.

Give Support
chiefwej said:
Halon isn't toxic, but when it reacts in extinguishing a fire, toxic gasses are produced. That is the reason for the exit alarms in halon systems.
I spent my career 40 years in the fire service, retired as Fire Chief, (thus the chief in chiefwej)
Click to expand...
Exactly.. I actually was a part of a project that first measured that (in the 80's)... a lot of pigs died trying to prove that null hypothesis. ;)
 
JamesW said:
The pool party in the video was outside.

Even outside, you can create a dangerous situation if the amount of oxygen in the local environment gets too low.
Click to expand...

Those videos are good reminders of why major manufacturers have well-staffed chemical hygiene & safety departments with on-site safety engineers and why chemical safety training, even for mundane stuff like LN2, is important. It’s also a good indication that Darwin’s Law is alive and well … sadly, stupid tends to procreate faster than Darwin can keep up with …
 
  • Haha
Reactions: YippeeSkippy
I'm just irritated that the reporter claimed the Nitrogen reacted with the chlorine to create a toxic chemical. It was just nitrogen vapor blocking oxygen.
 
  • Like
Reactions: JamesW
With the Halon systems, yeah they told us to hold our breath and get the heck out as fast as possible. You could drop within a minute or two. And yes in both cases it is due to oxygen displacement. The effect is the same. By toxic levels I meant of displacement. The advantage to muriatic acid fumes, small amounts of Chlorine fumes or even CO2 displacement is that you know it's coming.... At least in the liquid nitrogen areas we have O2 monitors.. you have plenty of time to get out if they go off, thankfully.

The big point is like anything else, if you handle the chlorine correctly, it's not really super dangerous. It can be a good way of taking care of a pool. Now in the case of the local service... honestly I stay across the street and away from them when they show up across the street. They do have scary looking equipment... but it seems fine... But the once a week aspect of it... I dunno. 2x a week could really work tho, honestly....
 
Rattus Suffocatus said:
With the Halon systems, yeah they told us to hold our breath and get the **** out as fast as possible. You could drop within a minute or two. And yes in both cases it is due to oxygen displacement.
Click to expand...
Well partly...not just oxygen gets depleted. A bunch of nasties also get created in the fire suppression process. Sulfuric acid gas, HCl... how do I know... well kids pull up a pool noodle for a good story...
I was a part of a NASA group in my early mad scientist days that studied heat transfer and fire behavior related stuff. The group I was a part of did the theoretical heat transfer calcs and computer simulations to define the boundaries of the actual experiments. The math was thick and mind numbing but the science experiments were cool because we got to blow things up and set things on fire. We were a group of rowdy physicists stuck a building with bunch of stodgy chemists (with all due deference to Joyful) called the "Chemical Research Project Office" or more fondly known as "C.R.a.P.O"!
One of the studies we took over from the Army. They wanted to find out what happens when an armor piercing heat round hit the gas tank of a Tank or Armored Personnel Carrier (APC) and the Halon fire suppression system puts the fire out. The Army's version of the study stuck a bunch of pigs (because they have an anatomy similar to humans) in an APC and they shot at it with a heat round. The conclusion of the study was ..."The pigs died". That's it. There was no analysis of the resulting atmosphere, no pressure transducers to see what kind of shock wave there was, and no autopsies of the pigs to determine what they actually died of... they just died. This became the rallying cry for every bad science experiment we encountered from then on.... we would look at each other and just say... "The pigs died".
So our version of the experiment we did on the computer first.. this was pre PC's, Big IRON IBM main frame stuff. We wheeled boxes of computer cards over to the computing center to load up our app and our data set... the numbers it spit out were scary.. H2SO4 in toxic levels.. nah, can't be. Must be a bad decimal place... so we ran it again. and the same stuff came back. So we told the guys at White Sands that were building the test APC in the dessert to configure their samplers for H2SO4 and HCl gas in these "ranges"... they poo-pooed us but did it anyway. And sure enough when they shot the test APC, they found those chemical in the concentrations we predicted... virtual stoichiometry was the hero of the day. Then we passed the information on to the rest of the fire industry from there.... Our conclusion? The shock wave of the blast probably killed most of the pigs first, and the atmosphere that resulted from the Halon putting out the fire finished off the rest of them... but in our version of the experiment.. no pigs died.
 
Last edited:
  • Love
Reactions: Newdude and JoyfulNoise
mguzzy said:
Well partly...not just oxygen gets depleted. A bunch of nasties also get created in the fire suppression process. Sulfuric acid gas, HCl... how do I know... well kids pull up a pool noodle for a good story...
I was a part of a NASA group in my early mad scientist days that studied heat transfer and fire behavior related stuff. The group I was a part of did the theoretical heat transfer calcs and computer simulations to define the boundaries of the actual experiments. The science was thick and mind numbing but the experiments were cool because we got to blow things up and set things on fire. We were a group of rowdy physicists stuck a building with bunch of stodgy chemists (with all due deference to Joyful) called the "Chemical Research Project Office" or more fondly known as "Crud-O"!
One of the studies we took over from the Army. They wanted to find out what happens when an armor piercing heat round hit the gas tank of a Tank or Armored Personal Carrier (APC) and the Halon fire suppression system puts the fire out. The Army's version of the study stuck a bunch of pigs (because they have an anatomy similar to humans) in an APC and they shot at it with a heat round. The conclusion of the study was ..."The pigs died". That's it. There was no analysis of the resulting atmosphere, no pressure transducers to see what kind of shock wave there was, and no autopsies of the pigs to determine what they actually died of... they just did. This became the rallying cry for every bad science experiment we encountered from then on.... we would look at each other and just say... "The pigs died".
So our version of the experiment we did on the computer first.. this was pre PC's, Big IRON IBM main frame stuff. We wheeled boxes of computer cards over to the computing center to load up our app and our data set... the numbers it spit out were scary.. H2SO4 in toxic levels.. nah, can't be. Must be a bad decimal place... so we ran it again. and the same stuff came back. So we told the guys at White Sands that were building the test APC in the dessert to configure their samplers for H2SO4 and HCl gas in these "ranges"... they poo-pooed us but did it anyway. And sure enough when they shot the test APC, they found those chemical in the concentrations we predicted... virtual stoichiometry was the hero of the day. Then we passed the information on to the rest of the fire industry from there.... Our conclusion? The shock wave of the blast probably killed the pigs first, and the atmosphere that resulted from the Halon putting out the fire finished off the rest of them... but in our version of the experiment.. no pigs died.
Click to expand...

But after the experiment was over, did you guys have pulled pork for dinner?? I mean, why waste the pigs as they were already BBQ'd ...
 
  • Like
  • Haha
Reactions: Newdude, Rattus Suffocatus and mguzzy
mguzzy said:
And sure enough when they shot the test APC, they found those chemical in the concentrations we predicted... virtual stoichiometry was the hero of the day. Then we passed the information on to the rest of the fire industry from there.
Click to expand...
I just designed a computer simulation that models the test parameters, but it works only in the case of spherical pigs in a vacuum.
 
  • Haha
  • Like
Reactions: JoyfulNoise, Newdude and mguzzy

Enjoying this content?

Support TFP with a donation.

Give Support
You must log in or register to reply here.
Thread Status
Hello , This thread has been inactive for over 60 days. New postings here are unlikely to be seen or responded to by other members. For better visibility, consider Starting A New Thread.
Top Bottom
Back
Jump to latest Follow Reply