Articles

Borate Chemistry

Posted by Rob Estell on September 7, 2010 at 11:17am

This article was originally posted in the September 15, 2010 issue of Pool and Spa News.

The Authors are Jeff Lloyd, Vice President of research & Development at Nisus Corporation and Mark Manning Technical Manager for US Borax / Rio Trinto Minerals.

This is the best article ive seen on this topic. If someone has seen a better one, let me know.

Sept 15th Pool and Spa News article on Boate Chemistry

Sincerely,

Rob Estell

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Comments

  • Richard A. Falk September 9, 2010 at 11:46am
    There is one minor technical flaw in the article. It states the following:

    Some technicians swear by borates and will use them as a complete replacement for alkalinity; after all, with the carbonate system it is continuously being lost from the water as CO2. However, borates also work well with carbonate and cyanurate to form three layers of buffering.

    When carbon dioxide is outgassed, the pH rises with no change in Total Alkalinity (TA). However, when the pH is restored by lowering it by adding acid (or using an acidic source of chlorine such as Trichlor), then the TA is lowered as well so the net result over time is a drop in TA which is what they mean, though could have been worded better.
  • Richard A. Falk September 8, 2010 at 7:35pm
    That is a good article (probably more technical than most would like) and is accurate. However, the sequestering ability is very weak so can pretty much be neglected as far as the saturation index is concerned where 50 ppm Borates would lower the index by about 0.02 units assuming you allow for the 5.2 ppm TA increase from the Borates (i.e. keep the carbonate alkalinity the same).

    The article doesn't talk about boron toxicity, but I write about that in this thread.
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