Can you buy sodium hypochlorite?

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A. Hi, Brooke

Sodium hypochlorite is NaOCl, basically bleach ⇦ in bulk on eBay or Amazon [affil link] -- "Clorox" is one brand name. Laundry grade is pretty powerful, and can kill you with toxic chlorine gas vapors if mixed with the wrong stuff. "Industrial bleach" at about 2-1/2 to 3 times that strength is available, too.

If you can tell us what you are planning, maybe we can answer more directly.

Ted Mooney, P.E.
Striving to live Aloha
finishing.com - Pine Beach, New Jersey

A. Hi Brooke, Clorox is a brand name, so they theoretically could put fragrances or something else into it if they wanted to, but I don't think they do. The idea of bleach is essentially to try to offer you the functionality of chlorine gas, but dissolved into a water solution. Chlorine gas won't stay dissolved unless the pH of the solution is held high with NaOH, and unless there is a reasonable amount of water. So sodium hypochlorite (bleach) has sufficient NaOH in it to hold the pH high enough to keep the chlorine in solution so it doesn't immediately deteriorate or explosively decompose, and enough water that it can be reasonably stable.

So if you say you looking for "pure" sodium hypochlorite without anything else in it, it's tricky to try to tell you whether bleach has anything else in it ... it does, but you couldn't actually have usable and stable sodium hypochlorite without that NaOH and water. Note that it is dangerous to mix bleach with other materials because if the reaction lowers the pH, that chlorine gas can't stay in the water, and it will fill the air.

Ted Mooney, P.E.
Striving to live Aloha
finishing.com - Pine Beach, New Jersey

A. The strongest that I am aware of is in a powder form that you can buy at a paint store that carries wallpaper. It is basically a mold killer in this form. You mix it with water according to instructions and use carefully following the instructions and cautions and warnings.

A. Sodium hypochlorite is only available in liquid form. You can get it at retail in concentrations as high as 15% about 3 times as strong as household bleach or Clorox. You get it a pool supply store and it is commonly known as "pool shock". Most stores sell it at 12.5%. The powdered form someone mentioned is actually calcium hypochlorite and is not nearly as effective as sodium hypochlorite. Sodium hypo. sold at 12.5% is unstable. You need to get it relatively fresh and in a sealed, dark container (usually blue). It stabilizes at around 5.5% which is why that is the percentage you will see in household bleach products.

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A. Hi, Mark. I wouldn't say it absolutely can't be done, but I'd bet it's quite difficult and impractical. Why not just buy bleach (sodium hypochlorite) if that's what you want, or pool shock (calcium hypochlorite) if that's what you want?

The reason both chemicals are made, instead of just one, is that they don't work exactly the same way although they are both used for chlorination and disinfection -- the 'hypochlorite' part (OCl^-) is probably the heart of the matter.

But please explain your situation. Asking people to agree or disagree with an abstract proposition that stuff is "used for the same thing" is a very tricky concept: sugar and saccharin are "used for the same thing" (sweetening), but you can wreck a person's diet, and possibly even kill a diabetic patient by substituting one for the other :-)

Regards,

Ted Mooney, P.E.
Striving to live Aloha
finishing.com - Pine Beach, New Jersey

A. Hi, Roberto.

Dry sodium hypochlorite is explosive, so I tend to doubt that that is what you have. But I can't suggest to people how they mix dangerous chemicals that aren't even positively identified, and which are lacking MSDS sheets and technical data sheets.

Regards,

Ted Mooney, P.E.
Striving to live Aloha
finishing.com - Pine Beach, New Jersey

A. Hi, Patricia.

I doubt that you can buy dry sodium hypochlorite; and it is explosive if you can. If it exists, it would require way, way more than 1/2 teaspoon per gallon to equal 5.5%. If you want a dry disinfectant, are you sure you can't use calcium hypochlorite? What do you intend to do with this product which you want 50 gallons of? Thanks.

Regards,

Ted Mooney, P.E.
Striving to live Aloha
finishing.com - Pine Beach, New Jersey

A. Why not purchase a pool chlorine product that is 90% available chlorine? These are sold locally, pool supply stores. etc., and either in granular or solid cake form. When you want the equivalent of "household bleach" 5% strength, just mix in 1 gallon (128 oz) of H2O. I.e., to make an approx. 5% sol'n by weight just mix 7 oz of 90% available chlorine substance with 1 gallon of H2O to get => (0.9)(7)/128 ≈ 0.05 = 5% solution.

A. Hi Dennis. I don't think any such chemical exists; further, I don't think "sodium hypochlorite" (which I think is what you were actually looking for before the Chinese Whispers) is commercially available as a powder. I think you would need to go to calcium hypochlorite if you want powder form.

Regards,

Ted Mooney, P.E.
Striving to live Aloha
finishing.com - Pine Beach, New Jersey

A. Hi Dennis. I'm not commenting on allergies because I have no medical training and I'm unqualified to even have an opinion :-)

But I understand that sodium hypochlorite is not available as a powder whereas calcium hypochlorite is, and that it's the hypochlorite (OCl^-), not the sodium or calcium, that provides the disinfection power. Good luck.

Regards,

Ted Mooney, P.E.
Striving to live Aloha
finishing.com - Pine Beach, New Jersey

A. Hi Paul. Laundry bleach IS sodium hypochlorite.

Regards,

Ted Mooney, P.E.
Striving to live Aloha
finishing.com - Pine Beach, New Jersey

Hi Kim. That is probably something for a full-time professional like your well digger to figure out. What happens is the chlorine is consumed by all sorts of chemical and biological reactions depending on what's in it, and you need to supply enough chlorine that you still have "free chlorine" available after all those reactions. "Breakpoint chlorination" is a pretty complicated subject, but this video should help. Good luck.

Regards,

Ted Mooney, P.E.
Striving to live Aloha
finishing.com - Pine Beach, New Jersey

A. Hi Wayne. On another thread, topic 34002, someone working on a roof inhaled something sprayed by another person and was seriously injured, and is suing them for medical damages. It was probably sodium hypochlorite.

I don't think you should do this based on internet advice or reading, but only if you've received hands-on training with it. Atomizing bleach into an inhalable aerosol sounds horribly dangerous!

Regards,

Ted Mooney, P.E. RET
Striving to live Aloha
finishing.com - Pine Beach, New Jersey

A. There's cyanuric chloride. Also, calcium hypochlorite.

A. Both sodium and calcium hypochlorite are used in the hydroPonic industry as a system maintenance preventive, and root enhancer.
It's done at 0.028%. There are numerous products , Under Currents UC ROOTS, CLEAR REZ ,and Shunk Labs RES CLEAR.
UCroots and clear res and res clear are hypochlorous acid. Witch is what the 4$ ,1-lb bag of pool shock ,either sodium ,or calcium hypochlorite breaks down to when you add water to it. One gram of 49% hypochlorite (HTH, SHOCK TREATMENT) in one gal of water makes a concentrate of the above products. One ounce of that concentrated solution in 5 gal of water gives you roughly 0.028%. Watch the pythium (root rot ) and other micro organisms disappear, and the roots explode like you've never seen. One liter of this concentrate sells for 20$ in a hydroponic store OR one lb makes 450 gal of concentrate that treats up to 297,000 gal of water for hydro use.
Don't use in soil unless you have the beneficial organisms to replace the ones the chemical kills. It kills everything alive in dirt like it does in pool or hydro water.
Hope it helps dude.

A. Hi Tony. When you don't tell us where and how and why you want to use something, but you want to know whether liquid or powder is better, it's tough to answer. 12-15% liquid sodium hypochlorite is available from suppliers of water & wastewater treatment chemicals. But it should be kept cool and out of the light to slow down the decomposition. Liquid bleaches like this include sodium hydroxide for stabilization, and this can increase or decrease the cost of pH control, depending on whether you want to raise or lower the pH for whatever you are doing.

The term "pool shock" quickly became slang, and may mean different things to different people. The chlorinating power of most is very high, but whether they are safe to have around, let alone use for unspecified purposes, can depend on exactly what it is, for example HTH-brand calcium hypochlorite and tri-chlor (Trichloro-S-Triazinetrione) may both be called 'shock'. Never add water to them, only add them to water. Good luck.

Regards,

Ted Mooney, P.E. RET
Striving to live Aloha
finishing.com - Pine Beach, New Jersey

A. Hi. That sounds horribly strong! I suspect they were talking about starting with 12.5% and diluting it, but I'm from the electroplating industry not the roof cleaning industry so I can't comment knowledgeably. Try to google that topic some more for confirmation from people who are experienced with it.

But please be very careful with this whole idea, and read the question from Wayne C and response. Good luck.

Regards,

Ted Mooney, P.E. RET
Striving to live Aloha
finishing.com - Pine Beach, New Jersey

A. Hi Darrell. You haven't said why you want to do this, or what material the storage container is made of, etc.; but it sounds to me like you're a prepper. 1/8 teaspoon per gallon of 5% bleach is suggested; twice that much if the water was cloudy. Home prepared water is good for a year; commercial stored water 5 years (it probably started out cleaner and more free of contaminants). Jordan Valley Water Conservancy District has a helpful page at
https://jvwcd.org/water/emergency

Regards,

Ted Mooney, P.E. RET
Striving to live Aloha
finishing.com - Pine Beach, New Jersey

A. Hi Paul. There are other routes to chlorination including sodium hypochlorite, calcium hypochlorite, electrolysis of table salt, and chlorine gas (a leak at my retirement village caused a shutdown of the whole clubhouse for 7 months and counting -- it will probably be a year). But there is probably no practical route to make your own except sodium hypochlorite (bleach) and commercial calcium hypochlorite based powders/tablets.

Regards,

Ted Mooney, P.E. RET
Striving to live Aloha
finishing.com - Pine Beach, New Jersey

A. I take it you're not a pool owner, Ted.

There's also di-chlor and tri-chlor tablets and sticks which work just fine.

I hear what you say about chlorine gas. I once worked in a factory which did a good bit of cyanide based plating and a lot of molten cyanide heat treating. We had to destroy all that cyanide, so used gaseous chlorine in ton cylinders.

One day a gasket in one of the chlorine feeders failed and released maybe 5# of chlorine into the plant. 1500 people were quickly evacuated with no injuries, and the plant was ventilated out in an hour, so that much was not a major problem, but we had millions of instantly rusted steel parts.

It took months to get them all cleaned up.

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Hi Jeff. Way back when, I designed a wastewater treatment system which used chlorine gas instead of bleach. I've always been anal about safety, so after a study of chlorine accidents, we did everything perfectly: an isolated chlorine room with outside exit; chlorine detectors in the main plant and the chlorine room; emergency ventilation system; eductors which required a vacuum in the main plant so a leak into the plant was not possible; glass walls looking into the chlorine room from the main plant so people could see into it if anything went wrong; bright lighting...

But it turned out to be a constant source of friction with the union ... them believing that chlorine must be worse than plutonium if we were being this careful. After a couple of years, management finally had to give up and switch to liquid bleach :-(

Regards,

Ted Mooney, P.E. RET
Striving to live Aloha
finishing.com - Pine Beach, New Jersey

A. Hi Jaime. First, you need to realize that it can be dangerous to spray sodium hypochlorite (see thread 340/02 for example).

Although I have no roof mold/moss experience, I find it difficult to believe that undiluted household bleach isn't strong enough, and the internet suggests anything from 1:1 bleach to water ratio to 1:4 bleach to water. But yes, you can buy high strength industrial bleach from a commodity chemical supplier if you wish. Trying to mix up from powder a liquid which is more powerful than household bleach sounds tricky as well as dangerous. But good luck.

Regards,

Ted Mooney, P.E. RET
Striving to live Aloha
finishing.com - Pine Beach, New Jersey