Attn: Chemistry geeks. HOCL

[A. Gorilla]

Hypochlorous acid.

Claims:. 80-100x better disinfectant than bleach for a variety of reasons

Non corrosive. Non toxic (to us). Easy to make with electrolysis. (2)H20 + NaCL=HOCL+NaOH and H2 gas. I think.

Short shelf life, around 4 hours.

Thr stabilized stuff seems to be sold as a thing to get rid of salt build ups in hydroponic settings and treating drinking water. Shouldn't it be good for fungus etc on our plants?

Rapidly oxidizes uric acid in piss stains.

So here I am running a car battery charger with saltwater and it seems to be working. Plenty of gas coming off the negative end.

Odor isn't changing. Appearance isn't changing.

Could I test for parts per million with a chlorine test kit?

The consumer HOCL-making devices say 8 minutes, and you are good to go with a disinfectant spray. But how much is in there? What is the dwell time to disinfect?

Some of these questions are hard to find answers to.

 

[A. Gorilla]

Update. The negative end stopped making bubbles. I figured it was "done".

Sure enough, no salt taste at all.

Something happened. Amazing.

Now how to test and use.

 

[sorce]

Pics!

Sorce

 

[Wires_Guy_wires]

Hydrogen gas is extremely flammable and will damage almost everything it touches. So don't scale up ;-)

What's the goal?

Why not use KOH? KCl? HgCl?

If it dissolves salts, it could destroy your inorganic soil and damage unglazed pots too.

Sterilisation of spores isn't going to happen, so it might kill live fungus if it penetrates deep enough in those 8 minutes. What are the breakdown products? Cl gas? OH liquid? What does it do to the cuticle?

Please keep in mind that the desinfection time with 80% ethanol is roughly 10 minutes.

I love kitchen science, but killing bacteria in drinking water is different than soil bacteria that sporulate.

I'd like to know more!

 

[A. Gorilla]

Hydrogen gas is extremely flammable and will damage almost everything it touches. So don't scale up ;-)

What's the goal?

Why not use KOH? KCl? HgCl?

If it dissolves salts, it could destroy your inorganic soil and damage unglazed pots too.

Sterilisation of spores isn't going to happen, so it might kill live fungus if it penetrates deep enough in those 8 minutes. What are the breakdown products? Cl gas? OH liquid? What does it do to the cuticle?

Please keep in mind that the desinfection time with 80% ethanol is roughly 10 minutes.

I love kitchen science, but killing bacteria in drinking water is different than soil bacteria that sporulate.

I'd like to know more!

I'm clueless here.

A company called pathocide makes it. Says 200 ppm and a dwell time of 10 min kills everything its capable of killing (quite a lot. Some things die in as little as 10 seconds, others 30 seconds etc).

This is what I basically want to accomplish even if its useless for plants:

I want 200ppm HOCL in a water/acetic acid solution with a ph of 5 or 6.

I'm happy to assume my heinz 5% vinegar is about 2.5 ph and my lake Michigan water is 7.0 ph.

Masses and dilution ratios is what I need.

Salt, water, vinegar.

Help!

 

[A. Gorilla]

Product summary

 

[A. Gorilla]

Some petition for it to be used on food.

 

[Wires_Guy_wires]

Hypochlorous acid is a (by)product of regular household bleach (sodium hypoclorite + H2O) by the way.
And to be honest, I don't see the reactions you've written down on the wikipedia page about HClO. But let's continue nonetheless.

Let's call it ClOH because I always like it when the OH falls off.
In a buffering acetic acid solution, it will probably break down faster due to interactions with the acetic acid. CH3COOH can both lose that H as well as the OH part, so it's just keep pounding on your ClOH until it falls apart.

I wouldn't use weak acids to store anything, unless it's advised to do so.

It's been ages since I made these equations, I have cheat sheets for them now. So do count on my math being off by miles. I never liked chemistry or math - which is why I chose biology and biotech, and why I let others go over my calculations twice. Please, do your own calculations and use logic, I know my limits and I'm going beyond that here. I'm just doing this to keep me busy and to be corrected later by a sharp bonsainut user.

So let's go with water.
To produce 200ppm in 1L of water, you'd need roughly 0.2 grams in total, of your final product. 1 liter of water weighs 1000 grams, multiply it by a 1000 and you'll have 1 million. Divide 200 by 1000 and you'll have 0.2.
Cl has a mass of 35.4 grams/mole
O has a mass of 16 grams/mole
H has a mass of 1 grams/mole
Making a total mass of 35.4+16+1=52.46 grams per mole of ClOH.
0.2/52.46=0.0038 moles. So your 200ppm solution is 0.0038M or 3.8 micromole (uM).


To produce 3.8 uM of ClOH, HClO or HOCl, you'd need the same amount of moles of the individual components.
NaCl = 54.88 grams/mole, Cl =35.4 so the Na = 19.48
Since you're working in an excess of water, let's assume there's enough water to make a molecule - if we're even allowed to call it a molecule, in theory it's an acid.
To get 0.0038 moles of Cl into your solution, you'd need to use 35.4/54.88 = 0.64 more NaCl than 0.0038 to account for the mass of the sodium. So 0.0038x1.64 = 0.006232 moles of NaCl.
That's 0.006232x54.88= 0.342 grams of sodium chloride in 1L of water to make 200ppm.
Double the amount of salt, and you can use 500mL of stock solution to add 500mL of water to and make a 200ppm solution.
Quadriple the amount of salt, and you can use just 250mL. Quintiple, 200mL, Octiple and 125mL, and so on. But the more concentrated your solution will be, the more likely it is to damage you or something else.

Keep the heat in mind, too! Electricity and salted water can potentially get warm.

I'm reading you'll produce as much HCl as you'll produce ClOH because it's a balanced reaction. Something to keep in the back of your mind as well.

pH calculations are pretty straight forward, there are calculators online for that, I can recommend wolfram alpha because it can also interpret language to some extent and it'll give you all the steps in between.
Buffering solutions, like acetic acid, make it more difficult, but those formulas too don't require a lot of math. As long as you're 100% sure what the actual concentration of acetic acid in your vinegar really is. From the supermarket stuff I've tested back when I was in school, there's a 2.5% deviation. So you can't really be sure unless you start doing titrations or hyper correct pH measurements.

 

[A. Gorilla]

I pulled that equation out my ass. I found the real ones.

 

[A. Gorilla]

Hypochlorous acid is a (by)product of regular household bleach (sodium hypoclorite + H2O) by the way.
And to be honest, I don't see the reactions you've written down on the wikipedia page about HClO. But let's continue nonetheless.

Let's call it ClOH because I always like it when the OH falls off.
In a buffering acetic acid solution, it will probably break down faster due to interactions with the acetic acid. CH3COOH can both lose that H as well as the OH part, so it's just keep pounding on your ClOH until it falls apart.

I wouldn't use weak acids to store anything, unless it's advised to do so.

It's been ages since I made these equations, I have cheat sheets for them now. So do count on my math being off by miles. I never liked chemistry or math - which is why I chose biology and biotech, and why I let others go over my calculations twice. Please, do your own calculations and use logic, I know my limits and I'm going beyond that here. I'm just doing this to keep me busy and to be corrected later by a sharp bonsainut user.

So let's go with water.
To produce 200ppm in 1L of water, you'd need roughly 0.2 grams in total, of your final product. 1 liter of water weighs 1000 grams, multiply it by a 1000 and you'll have 1 million. Divide 200 by 1000 and you'll have 0.2.
Cl has a mass of 35.4 grams/mole
O has a mass of 16 grams/mole
H has a mass of 1 grams/mole
Making a total mass of 35.4+16+1=52.46 grams per mole of ClOH.
0.2/52.46=0.0038 moles. So your 200ppm solution is 0.0038M or 3.8 micromole (uM).


To produce 3.8 uM of ClOH, HClO or HOCl, you'd need the same amount of moles of the individual components.
NaCl = 54.88 grams/mole, Cl =35.4 so the Na = 19.48
Since you're working in an excess of water, let's assume there's enough water to make a molecule - if we're even allowed to call it a molecule, in theory it's an acid.
To get 0.0038 moles of Cl into your solution, you'd need to use 35.4/54.88 = 0.64 more NaCl than 0.0038 to account for the mass of the sodium. So 0.0038x1.64 = 0.006232 moles of NaCl.
That's 0.006232x54.88= 0.342 grams of sodium chloride in 1L of water to make 200ppm.
Double the amount of salt, and you can use 500mL of stock solution to add 500mL of water to and make a 200ppm solution.
Quadriple the amount of salt, and you can use just 250mL. Quintiple, 200mL, Octiple and 125mL, and so on. But the more concentrated your solution will be, the more likely it is to damage you or something else.

Keep the heat in mind, too! Electricity and salted water can potentially get warm.

I'm reading you'll produce as much HCl as you'll produce ClOH because it's a balanced reaction. Something to keep in the back of your mind as well.

pH calculations are pretty straight forward, there are calculators online for that, I can recommend wolfram alpha because it can also interpret language to some extent and it'll give you all the steps in between.
Buffering solutions, like acetic acid, make it more difficult, but those formulas too don't require a lot of math. As long as you're 100% sure what the actual concentration of acetic acid in your vinegar really is. From the supermarket stuff I've tested back when I was in school, there's a 2.5% deviation. So you can't really be sure unless you start doing titrations or hyper correct pH measurements.

Are you basing those amounts on the reaction going til completion?

These consumer models give instructions like I've attached.

Sounds like they are loading up the salt and then capping the times of electrolysis until the desired ppm is reached? Allowing for any surpluses to harmlessly remain.

 

[A. Gorilla]

>>Hypochlorous acid is a (by)product of regular household bleach (sodium hypoclorite + H2O) by the way.

As I've gathered, stabilizing it is the problem. The lack of shelf life is what prevents it being on a store shelf.

 

[A. Gorilla]

Fml.

Turns out....

Sodium dichloro-s-triazinetrione AKA sodium dichlorisocyurinate AKA sodium dichlor AKA NaDCC AKA granular pool chlorine (from walmart in a 5 pound bucket) yields exactly the same thing these hippies are electrolysizing about...because it sounds more organic.*

Thanks for just telling me that, Geekazoid.

*Ignore what I said about doing that earlier today. Just a prank, bro.

 

[Oliver Muscio]

Hypochlorous acid.

Claims:. 80-100x better disinfectant than bleach for a variety of reasons

Non corrosive. Non toxic (to us). Easy to make with electrolysis. (2)H20 + NaCL=HOCL+NaOH and H2 gas. I think.

Short shelf life, around 4 hours.

Thr stabilized stuff seems to be sold as a thing to get rid of salt build ups in hydroponic settings and treating drinking water. Shouldn't it be good for fungus etc on our plants?

Rapidly oxidizes uric acid in piss stains.

So here I am running a car battery charger with saltwater and it seems to be working. Plenty of gas coming off the negative end.

Odor isn't changing. Appearance isn't changing.

Could I test for parts per million with a chlorine test kit?

The consumer HOCL-making devices say 8 minutes, and you are good to go with a disinfectant spray. But how much is in there? What is the dwell time to disinfect?

Some of these questions are hard to find answers to.

This thread is so full of errors! Electrolysis of salt water produces hydrogen gas, sodium hydroxide, and chlorine gas (Cl2). The latter two react to produce sodium hypochlorite: H2O + NaCl = H2 + NaOCl. Sodium hypochlorite (NaOCl) is the active ingredient of household bleach. This is neither non-corrosive nor non-toxic! (Don't try drinking bleach to prevent or cure Corona virus!). You would only get HOCl by adding acid to the NaOCl solution--not a good idea, either. This would release chlorine gas, used in gas warfare in WWI.

 

[A. Gorilla]

gas warfare in WWI.

I'm listening.

 

[A. Gorilla]

This thread is so full of errors! Electrolysis of salt water produces hydrogen gas, sodium hydroxide, and chlorine gas (Cl2). The latter two react to produce sodium hypochlorite: H2O + NaCl = H2 + NaOCl. Sodium hypochlorite (NaOCl) is the active ingredient of household bleach. This is neither non-corrosive nor non-toxic! (Don't try drinking bleach to prevent or cure Corona virus!). You would only get HOCl by adding acid to the NaOCl solution--not a good idea, either. This would release chlorine gas, used in gas warfare in WWI.

So what's with this, geeker?