New here and just starting on the path to fix my bromine mistake

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1bayouboy

Member
Jun 29, 2021
19
Charleston, SC
New to this forum and soaking in a lot of information. Wish I'd found this site before I put Yellow Treat in my pool. I've read a lot about draining to remove the sodium bromide.
I'm doing it it the slow route by replacing a few inches of water a day. I can't really drain the pool very far as it is a vinyl pool and the water table in my area is fairly high. I will suffer through the consequences until I get it where it needs to be. Meanwhile I read that Sodium Thiosulfate or a chlorine/bromine deactivator would work. Asking here about that because after reading quite a few articles here I no longer believe any of the ads or articles I read elsewhere.
 
Welcome to TFP :)

I am really sorry you are here for that yellow treat... from what I have read the only way is to completely remove all water and start over.. I do not think you can replace the water as the bromide is still in the pool...

You may be able to do a tarp replacement, it can be done and those that have a vinyl pool with high water levels are the ones who have had to do it... most of the time we do not recommend it but that may be your only choice..

Draining - Further Reading

www.troublefreepool.com www.troublefreepool.com

Reducing CYA, the Tarp method

Hi guys, Recently I found out that my CYA level was way too high, somewhere between 250 and 300. Having to replace around 80% of the water, doing it in one go would be too dangerous for my old vinyl liner, and multiple drain and refills would waste a lot of water. Searching on the forum for...
www.troublefreepool.com www.troublefreepool.com

Tarp method in-place water replacement

As some of you may know, my pool has been quite problematic with metal staining for many years. For the past 3 years I had been using Metal Magic to control the metal staining but lately, I've been having to use about 2 quarts of Metal Magic a week and have been having problems with chlorine...
www.troublefreepool.com www.troublefreepool.com
 
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I don't think I want to try a tarp method....this is a 43000 gal 24'x48' pool. I know I'm looking at a huge amount of water over time to finally get the sodium bromide out. I was hoping maybe there was a chemical removal option. But by deactivate I'm wondering if it just converts bromine back to bromide.
 
1bayouboy said:
I was hoping maybe there was a chemical removal option.
Click to expand...
There is none.

You must replace substantially all the water to remove the bromide. The way you are doing it will take many months and many times more water volume over the volume of your pool.
 
Once a bromine pool always a bromine pool till it is emptied and refilled with new water...

You could replace 300,000 gallons and it would still be a bromine pool...
 
Getting into research mode I found these articles on the use of Silver Impregnated Activated Carbon as a material to remove bromides from drinking water.

www.sciencedirect.com

Effect of preconditioning on silver leaching and bromide removal properties of silver-impregnated activated carbon (SIAC)

Silver impregnated activated carbon (SIAC) has been found to be effective in mitigating the formation of brominated-disinfection by products during dr…
www.sciencedirect.com www.sciencedirect.com

Bromide Removal from Surface Waters by Silver Impregnated Activated Carbon

Bromide is a precursor of disinfection by-products (DBPs) during potable water treatment, because it causes the formation of brominated DBPs that are more cyto- and geno-toxic than their chlorinated analogues. Due to the potential health risks of DBPs, the United States Environmental Protection...
tigerprints.clemson.edu tigerprints.clemson.edu

Wonder if a standalone cartridge filter and pump could be modified by adding an SIAC media....
 
1bayouboy said:
Getting into research mode I found these articles on the use of Silver Impregnated Activated Carbon as a material to remove bromides from drinking water.

www.sciencedirect.com

Effect of preconditioning on silver leaching and bromide removal properties of silver-impregnated activated carbon (SIAC)

Silver impregnated activated carbon (SIAC) has been found to be effective in mitigating the formation of brominated-disinfection by products during dr…
www.sciencedirect.com www.sciencedirect.com

Bromide Removal from Surface Waters by Silver Impregnated Activated Carbon

Bromide is a precursor of disinfection by-products (DBPs) during potable water treatment, because it causes the formation of brominated DBPs that are more cyto- and geno-toxic than their chlorinated analogues. Due to the potential health risks of DBPs, the United States Environmental Protection...
tigerprints.clemson.edu tigerprints.clemson.edu

Wonder if a standalone cartridge filter and pump could be modified by adding an SIAC media....
Click to expand...
Silver leaching would be a problem. Moving on to Activated Carbon with an applied voltage.
 

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I would really like to hear the opinions of the chemically inclined here on whether a Br- selective resin as identified in the paper below could be used in a specially built filter as a potential bromide removal mechanism???

Removal of Bromide from Natural Waters: Bromide-Selective vs. Conventional Ion Exchange Resins

The presence of bromide (Br−) in water results in the formation of brominated disinfection byproducts (DBPs) after chlorination, which are much more cytotoxic and genotoxic than their chlorinated analogs. Given that conventional water treatment processes (e.g., coagulation, flocculation, and...
tigerprints.clemson.edu tigerprints.clemson.edu
 
Have you been doing water exchanges? Because in the time you've spent looking up every possible alternative way to fix this problem you could have already fixed the problem.

Serious question: how do you intend to measure the before and after bromide levels to ascertain any of these experiments?
 
Thanks Donaldson....my pool is abnormally large and exchanging water can only happen at a low rate. If my posting annoys you I apologize. But research is something I do a lot. And one of the first things I noticed was that bromide is an issue in drinking water. And when something is an issue at that kind of scale a lot of research gets done in trying to economically solve it.

I have been exchanging water but can't do large quantities at a time. I think the question of testing is valid but I think an observable is how long the water appears to retain chlorine/bromine on a sunny day from a given starting value in the morning. From a chemistry perspective (and I'm not a chemist) I think some specific quantity of bromide in the water would convert a specific quantity of chlorine to bromine. If you have more chlorine than that quantity then it would get converted as the bromine cycles through the Bromine+UV = Bromide -> Bromide + Chlorine = Bromine loop. I think the total quantity of bromide ions plus UV flux would dictate the rate. I would expect that as I exchange water I would see an extension of the time I could detect bromine/chlorine. Certainly not a an accurate test but I would think an indicator. And if the drinking water industry has developed a Br- specific ion exchange resin at a reasonable cost where you could pack a filter with the material and pump pool water through it for a week and achieve the same relative result as exchanging 50% of the water then I would say that is worth looking into....IMHO.
 
It's your pool bayouboy, you are, of course, free to run it however you like. While we do have members with all sorts of useful knowledge, everyone here VOLUNTEERS their time. We are mostly a collection of pool enthusiasts who are happy to talk about the TFP method, not claiming to be experts on bromide pools.

Good luck with yours though, I hope you are able to convert!
 
You should be getting some decent rain come Wednesday with the storm Elsa coming thru. I would take advantage and drop the pool level at least a quarter and see if you can get a decent amount of fresh fill from the rain. If it doesn't fill it enough you'll just have to top it off.

Its a start.

Maddie :flower:
 
Usually we get 3-5 inches from an event like Elsa. Takes a pretty good storm to generate more than 5 inches. We had a strange weather event over a weekend a number of years back where I got 27 inches from a Fri morning till Sunday night. Right now I am replacing water about 4 inches a day. I know the consequences of that...diminishing returns for a given quantity of water, but that is my limitation. Rain will certainly help me out but I think I am on a grind that will take patience and persistence. I've learned a great deal from this siteover the last couple of weeks. With the amount of water that I've exchanged to date I have observed that a given starting FC value in the morning will be detectable until later in the day for a full sunny day. If my research leads me to any other epiphany I will report back.
 
So last post in this thread as an update:

I probably exchanged about 50% of the water over a couple of weeks. I also spiked the chlorine (or bromine) every evening to the 7-10 range. over a couple of weeks. It would measure at the same level early morning but all would be gone by noon.

Currently I'm at CYA 50, CH 350, TA 100, pH 7.6 (although drifts up every day and I have to add some acid), and FC can start at 5-6 in the morning and drop down to 3 by dark...basically FC drop is around 3ppm over a bright day. This pool gets at least 8-9 hours of direct SC sun unless it's overcast. My observation is that where all chlorine would be lost by noon right after adding the bromide, now the pool is retaining chlorine all day even in a very bright direct sun. The actual chlorine loss looks like it would be about normal for the CYA and sunlight level?? SO....is it really still a bromine pool??
 
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