Terry and Eric continue the conversation about chemical conflicts, and in this episode they focus on chlorine alternatives. Biguanides, hydrogen peroxide, bromine, and secondary systems.
00:00 - Introduction
01:01 - Biguanides
03:45 - Hydrogen Peroxide
05:37 - Bromine
07:06 - Secondary Systems
10:51 - Wrap up
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123. Chemical Conflicts | Alternative Sanitizers (w/ Terry Arko)
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[00:00:00] Eric Knight: This is part three of our multi part series on chemical conflicts. If you haven't heard the last two episodes, go back and listen to them. Because At least in my mind, I know there's a lot of overlap, but they do kind of build on one another.
[00:00:12] In the first episode, we talked about chlorine conflicts. The risks of mixing chlorine with other products directly together. In the last episode, 122, we talked about what conflicts once it's in the water? Specifically, we talked about algaecides and polymers. Those will conflict with chlorine, and polymers will conflict with enzyme as well.
[00:00:33] In this episode, we're going to talk about alternative sanitizers, chlorine alternatives, basically. Joining me again, Terry Arko, the chemistry expert and the guru. Thank you for being with us, Terry.
[00:00:44] Terry Arko: Sure. Glad to be here again, Eric.
[00:00:46] Eric Knight: Yes, thank you for being here on short notice. You don't really know what's coming your way, but you have this all in your brain. So we're going to pick your brain. This is episode 123. Anything you want to add before we get into it?
[00:00:57] Terry Arko: Let's just go. I'm ready.
Biguanides
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[00:01:01] Eric Knight: Okay. Terry, let's start with biguanides. I know they're not that popular, but every so often we get some questions about it. I know they exist. What is a biguanide and how does it work?
[00:01:31] Terry Arko: That again is a polymer, polybiguanides. And polybiguanide actually is a form of a disinfectant that came out of the medical world.
[00:01:42] It's actually a surgical scrub that's used to disinfect bacteria and germs. That's where it came from.
[00:01:48] Eric Knight: Interesting.
[00:01:49] Terry Arko: Somebody somehow got hold of it to use it as a alternative to chlorine in swimming pools in the form of biguanide. And it is a good bacteria killer and disinfectant but not a real strong oxidizer, like chlorine. So that is an issue and probably one of the biggest problems with biguanide that you have.
[00:02:10] If you're on a biguanide system, you're going to use a hydrogen peroxide form of a shock and an oxidizer on a pretty regular basis. And the one thing about that hydrogen peroxide is that it's I believe it's about a 33% hydrogen peroxide.
[00:02:27] Eric Knight: Wow. So way different than the hydrogen peroxide I have in my medicine cabinet, which I believe is 3%.
[00:02:33] Terry Arko: Right. And so it's 3%. And if you ever put hydrogen peroxide on a cut, or if you've splashed it in your eye or something like that, you know it's,
[00:02:42] Eric Knight: it's no joke.
[00:02:43] Terry Arko: Yeah. It is irritable. Well, if you kick that up, you know, to 33%, you can imagine if you splash some of that in your eye or got that on your skin it would not be a pleasant situation. So that's one thing.
[00:02:57] Eric Knight: That would be a wicked oxidizer. Can you use a non-chlorine shock like potassium monopersulfate in a biguanide pool?
[00:03:04] Terry Arko: No, see that's the issue challenge with biguanide systems. If you get locked into using biguanides in your pool, is that almost any other type of pool chemical is not compatible with it. For example, as you brought up, if you wanted to use, say, a non-chlorine shock like potassium monopersulfate. That's incompatible with biguanides.
[00:03:24] And if you were to do that, what's going to happen is it's going to turn your pool water orange, and you're going to get this orange gelatinous gel on the bottom of your pool. Which is very hard to remove. So it's not compatible with any type of algaecide, not compatible with chlorine.
[00:03:39] Eric Knight: Terry, you just gave me a great idea for me to ruin my pool.
[00:03:43] Terry Arko: Yeah, it'll do it. It'll do it.
Hydrogen Peroxide
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[00:03:45] Eric Knight: Wow. Okay. So that ties into the next one, hydrogen peroxide. Hydrogen peroxide, I know in the medical field and in the industrial applications is used to actually dechlorinate wastewater.
[00:03:57] Terry Arko: Exactly right.
[00:03:58] Eric Knight: So it conflicts directly with chlorine. It will neutralize it out. Now, interestingly enough, you can use hydrogen peroxide cleaning products in the bathrooms and the locker rooms of a commercial facility. It could be used as a deck cleaner, but we would recommend against that because it could get into the skimmers or the gutters.
[00:04:15] And I'm speaking to the commercial customers here, it's not necessarily a bad thing to clean the floors of your bathroom with it, as opposed to like a dimethyl ammonium chloride where the swimmer could track that into the pool. Or they're going to be dripping wet from the pool and go into the bathroom and create chloramines when the ammonia interacts with chlorinated water. It doesn't really go the other way. It may neutralize it, but it's not really going to be a conflict out of the water with hydrogen peroxide.
[00:04:44] That said, do not think, just because hydrogen peroxide is a great oxidizer, that it can go into chlorinated water at all. It should not be used in a chlorinated pool.
[00:04:54] Terry Arko: Yeah, I had a situation where, for some reason or another, someone thought that hydrogen peroxide was the liquid version of potassium monopersulfate. They felt like, well, hey, I can't get the MPS, so I'm going to go get some hydrogen peroxide. And I'm going to use that in place. And they shocked their pool with it. Well, their chlorine immediately went to zero.
[00:05:15] Eric Knight: Right.
[00:05:16] Terry Arko: That's when they called me on the phone and they're like, I don't know what's going on. And it took almost two weeks before they got to the point where they could get a chlorine residual back in that pool from the amount of hydrogen peroxide they'd put into the pool.
[00:05:30] Eric Knight: You hate to see it. It's kind of funny now, but it probably was not so funny at the time.
[00:05:35] Terry Arko: No. So that's a huge mistake.
Bromine
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[00:05:37] Eric Knight: Now, we talked in previous episodes about bromine. In the last episode, we talked about sodium bromide being a conflict because chlorine will have an affinity for oxidizing the bromide ion back into hypobromous acid. And in the bromine episode, we talked about the bromine cycle. In that episode, we talked about the need for an oxidizer to recharge the bromide ion into hypobromous acid.
[00:06:02] So that begs the question, if you had a bromine pool, could you use hydrogen peroxide to oxidize that into hypobromous acid?
[00:06:10] Terry Arko: Yeah, you could. The problem is that with certain forms of oxidation you can form bromates from bromine. And so you have to be really careful about that. Particularly if you have ozone, UV, something like that with bromine. And overall EPA is already beginning to create regulations where they're not allowing bromine and UV or ozone to be used in pools.
[00:06:34] Eric Knight: As a refresher, bromates are the known carcinogen that are a byproduct,
[00:06:38] Terry Arko: Right. They're neurotoxins and carcinogenic. Yeah.
[00:06:41] Eric Knight: Right. So you don't want them in the pool. So this is why we don't use bromine and outdoor pools because of direct sunlight.
[00:06:46] Terry Arko: Correct.
[00:06:46] Eric Knight: You don't use them on pools with secondary systems, UV or ozone. In general, it's really primarily used in hot tubs only right now, but try not to put it in a big pool. Okay, so those are alternative sanitizers. We have biguanides, which is reinforced with hydrogen peroxide, and then we have bromine.
Secondary systems
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[00:07:06] Eric Knight: So now let's talk about those secondary systems. The secondary systems that we primarily find on pools are UV, whether low pressure or medium pressure. Ozone, and there's multiple ways to create ozone. AOP, which is Advanced Oxidation Process, which creates hydroxyl radicals. And then a few other technologies that exist to sort of supplement things, even though they don't create a residual and they may not get EPA registration for kill claims, they can enhance the water.
[00:07:36] Something like hyper-dissolved oxygen is a good example of this. If the technology proves out, we've heard some positive reports of hydrodynamic cavitation is one of these things. It remains to be seen. I personally have experienced hyper-dissolved oxygen. I have not experienced hydrodynamic cavitation, but I'm sure there will be more technologies to come out.
[00:07:57] Generally speaking, Terry, why are none of these secondary systems primary systems?
[00:08:03] Terry Arko: Because none of those systems can leave a measurable residual in the pool water.
[00:08:09] Eric Knight: What does that mean?
[00:08:11] Terry Arko: Well, that means basically you have no sanitizer or protection out in the vessel of the pool. They're primarily reliant upon contact. And with UV, it's basically contact with the light rays that it's putting out into the chambers. Ozone, same thing. I mean, ozone basically is being produced in a certain area of the pool through the plumbing and the piping. It's being venturied in. But by the time that reaches the pool, that ozone is already degraded considerably and doesn't last long out in the vessel at all.
[00:08:46] It doesn't leave a measurable residual like you get from chlorine.
[00:08:50] Eric Knight: Right, and I know AOP, ozone, just kind of the rule of thumb, it's six to eight feet of plumbing usually. But in that six to eight feet, they kill just about anything.
[00:09:00] Terry Arko: Correct.
[00:09:00] Eric Knight: They're incredibly powerful at what they do.
[00:09:02] Terry Arko: That's absolutely correct.
[00:09:04] But again, if you don't have that protection out in the pool. So an example I can give you is with crypto. So ozone will deal with crypto. We know crypto is chlorine resistant.
[00:09:15] Eric Knight: Right.
[00:09:16] Terry Arko: So it can take 10 days at 1 ppm of chlorine to inactivate crypto in a pool. Ozone will inactivate crypto like instantaneously. If it passes in that right active ozone, it's pretty much gone within seconds.
[00:09:31] Eric Knight: If it passes through that point,
[00:09:33] Terry Arko: If it passes and has that. So as an example, when we had a lot of the crypto outbreaks going on, there was a YMCA that that's what they did. They put in ozone systems and they thought, we're good.
[00:09:47] Well, two weeks after installing these ozone systems, they had a crypto outbreak. Why? Well, because the crypto was out in the pool and it never got exposed to the ozone. And somebody swallowed it before it got exposed to the ozone, and you had a problem. So that's where residual chlorine could have helped possibly in that case, although we know it's chlorine resistant, but it still could have helped.
[00:10:11] Eric Knight: So it brings it back to that holy trinity of pool care where you have circulation, filtration, and chemistry. You need all three. You can't operate with just two of them.
[00:10:20] And so you could have the best secondary system, and you could even have a chlorine residual. But if you don't have circulation to bring the water to that ozone system, it doesn't really matter. And if you don't have a filter to take the hard particles out, it doesn't really matter. Things can overwhelm each other, and so you always want to remember that triangle of circulation, filtration, and chemistry. Not necessarily in that order. In some ways, you could say that they're equally important. But, it's immaterial. They're all three codependent on each other.
[00:10:49] Terry Arko: They're all important. They're all important.
Wrap up
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[00:10:51] Eric Knight: They are. Are there any other alternative sanitizers that you can think of that you would like to bring up?
[00:10:57] Those are the only ones I wrote down in the show notes that Jarred will never read.
[00:11:00] Terry Arko: Yeah, I think that, that mostly covers it. Of course, there's new things popping up all the time, we know.
[00:11:06] Eric Knight: Well, Terry, I appreciate you being on this. This has been episode 123. We're talking about chemical conflicts. This one was about alternative sanitizers. To recap, we talked about biguanides and the supplemental shock of hydrogen peroxide, neither of which are compatible with chlorine at all. Then bromine, which we've talked about in a previous episode. And secondary systems, which are not primary systems because they do not create a residual. Do you think we missed anything?
[00:11:33] Terry Arko: Not at this point. Possibly we could have. I'm sure something will come up, but...
[00:11:37] Eric Knight: Yeah, well, we're not perfect. You know what, we're going to publish it anyway.
[00:11:39] Terry Arko: I think we covered the mainstays.
[00:11:41] Eric Knight: Okay, cool. If you have any questions about this, whether it's for your pool or a customer's pool, if you're a pool pro, reach out. Our help center is ask.orendatech.com. You can email us at podcast@orendatech.com.
[00:11:56] Thank you so much for all of you who listen. We continue to get great ideas, although Terry has come in here and given me two really good ideas for episodes, so I may have to... interject those in front of some of the other ideas.
[00:12:09] But we have one more episode to go in this series. Maybe two. Not really sure. I'm Eric Knight and this is Terry. We're from HASA and Orenda, and thank you so much for listening to the Rule Your Pool podcast. We will see you next week. Thanks, Terry.
[00:12:22] Terry Arko: Thank you.