? For Chem Geek

[Hillbilly Hot Tub]

Richard, Chemistry question for you. We have a new customer that went to another dealer who gave her Baqa Spa sanitizer to use in her tub. Her tub was bromine. They did not have her drain the tub, and only sold her the oxidizer portion of Baqa (peroxide). As you can guess, she has goo, brown gunk ect. We told her she needs to swirl away the tub and drain it. My question is, chemically what happens mixing these 2 products. She and her grand children have been soaking in it. All we have ever been taught is Baqa does not mix with other chemicals, but never why. Do my CPO class Monday and Tuesday and I am going to ask him too.

[chem geek]

Actually, what you said doesn't make sense to me if I understood it correctly. If the tub had bromine in it and all that was added was hydrogen peroxide, then there shouldn't have been any brown goo. With chlorine, the chlorine would oxidize the hydrogen peroxide to oxygen gas. With bromine, I don't think that happens and instead hydrogen peroxide tends to reactivate bromide to bromine. Not sure what happens with lots of hydrogen peroxide added to bromine. It's possible for the hydrogen peroxide to oxidize the bromine to bromate (a suspected carcinogen), but I didn't think that looked like brown goo.

The brown goo would come from the oxidation of Baqua/biguanide/PHMB by chlorine and probably also by bromine. So I'm confused as to where the brown goo came from if there was no actual Baqua sanitizer sold to her. The alternative procedure to getting rid of Baqua other than using chlorine which produces very colorful intermediate products is to use sodium percarbonate which essentially produces a combination of sodium carbonate and hydrogen peroxide. It does the conversion about twice as fast and without the colorful intermediates (though there are intermediate oxidation products -- they just aren't as visible).

I don't know the specific intermediate chemicals that come from the oxidation of Baqua. With chlorine, and probably with bromine, it's a colorful process and smelly so that some byproducts are apparently volatile. I do not know if they are dangerous, but would expect a one-time brief exposure to be something to avoid, but not disasterous, but they should contact a doctor if there's any concern (not sure they'd know anything about it either).

Richard

[Hillbilly Hot Tub]

It was just the peroxide portion of baqa, but she had brown goo, so bad that it plugged the filters and stopped the tub from heating, which is why we were called out. She had been using MPS before that with no issue. She does have some iron in the water which may have caused the brown color, but the goo was the interesting part. We also do not know now what else she may have put in the tub, plus she had a dead rodent floating around.

We swirl awayed her tub and I went today to scrub refill and start her back on Nature 2, this what she was on when she first started and liked. She has been swapping to different dealers because they are dropping like flies around here. Hopefully we have her all set now.

[Nitro]

It was just the peroxide portion of baqa, but she had brown goo, so bad that it plugged the filters and stopped the tub from heating, which is why we were called out. She had been using MPS before that with no issue. She does have some iron in the water which may have caused the brown color, but the goo was the interesting part. We also do not know now what else she may have put in the tub, plus she had a dead rodent floating around.

We swirl awayed her tub and I went today to scrub refill and start her back on Nature 2, this what she was on when she first started and liked. She has been swapping to different dealers because they are dropping like flies around here. Hopefully we have her all set now.

I think the brown goo is the least of her worries.

[Hillbilly Hot Tub]

It was nasty, but we are swiral awayed, decontaminated and up and going with fresh water and Nature 2. Lets hope her visitors relatives learned from his mistake!