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Test Strips - Will TOTAL Chlorine also test TOTAL BROMINE?


mscdman

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I have a set of test strips that I purchased that claim to test free chlorine and free bromine which I don’t really care about. However what I am interested in is testing total bromine levels. The test does have a reading for total chlorine levels but does not list total bromine as an indicator can I use the total chlorine test for bromine? Other test kits seem to have total chlorine/total bromine as the same test...

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@Cusser  thanks.  It’s just odd because the results charts below on the package mentions FREE chlorine and bromine but for TOTAL it only lists chlorine and not Bromine leading me to believe it won’t test TOTAL bromine.   Yet some other kits say both total chlorine and bromine on the same reagent 🤷🏻‍♂️

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1 hour ago, RDspaguy said:

You cannot test "total" bromine, or bromide, levels in your water with a standard test kit or strip.

Also if you cannot test total bromine can you only test free bromine?  I’m confused how I’m supposed to check my Bromine levels in the tub so I’m not adding too much or too little...

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On 1/13/2021 at 10:10 PM, PNW Soaker said:

Ya you don't need to worry about "total bromine", the active bromine will show on the strip and the other stuff is actually bromide that doesn't pose an issue or anything, it's called a "bank" and it is activated with shock (and will then show up)

No, bromide does not show up as part of the total bromine. Total bromine is a measure of hypobromous acid and bromamines. Bromamines, unlike chloramines, are effective sanitizers. Total bromine is tested the same way as Free Chlorine with DPD, FAS-DPD, tetramethylbenzidine test strips, or syringaldazine/vanillin azine test strips.

Fun fact, if you want to convert the chlorine scale on your comparator or test strip container to give a total bromine reading then multiply the 'chlorine' reading by 2.25 to get total bromine. However, most comparators and test strip bottles just double the chlorine reading for their bromine scale (which is certainly close enough for the ppm levels we are testing).

Testing for sodium bromide (bromide bank) is much more difficult and either involves the use of sodium bromide titrator test strips (similar but not the same as salt test test strips) or by using a chemical titration test that is beyond the scope of home users and is more involved and/or uses highly toxic reagents such as mercuric nitrate (as opposed to the much less toxic silver nitrate used in the Taylor titiration test for sodium chloride).

 

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