What is Hypochlorous Acid?
• Inhibitory or lethal activity depends on the amount of Free Available Chlorine (as Hypochlorous Acid, or HOCL) in the water that comes in contact with microbial cells. • The dissociation of HOCL depends on pH, temperature, and the amount of chlorine that is consumed on contact with the organic matter. • Depending on the pH of the source water, the Hypochlorous acid will undergo complete or partial dissociation as follows: CL2 + H2O HOCL + HCL HOCL H+ + OCL- The significance of this disassociation is that Hypochlorous acid is a much more effective germicidal agent than the Hypochlorite ion.
Hypochlorous acid is a weak acid which can only exist in solution, because it is highly unstable when isolated in a pure form. There are a number of uses for this chemical, most of which take advantage of its strong oxidating properties, which allow it to be used as a bleach and disinfectant, among many other things. Numerous manufacturers produce hypochlorous acid for sale to both industrial users and ordinary consumers, and many stores carry it, typically in the household cleaning section. The chemical formula for this compound is HCIO. It is classically obtained by dissolving chlorine in water, although it can also be obtained by reacting chlorine with mercury(II) oxide to create a pure form, which is greenish-yellow in color. The “chlorine bleach” sold for disinfectant and laundering contains hypochlorous acid, and the systems used to chlorinate many water supplies rely on hypochlorous acid to kill unwanted microorganisms in the water, with the acid creating conditions which make l
LUCCI: Hypochlorous acid is an antibacterial solution. It’s extraordinarily efficient, extraordinarily powerful. Now in the right chamber there is a negative electrical charge. The sodium ion is the only ion allowed in there by the ion permeable membrane. The negative electrical charge attracts the positively charged … GELLERMAN: It’s been a while since high school, and Pat Lucci’s right, I did forget my basic chemistry. He gave me a remedial lesson on a white board. LUCCI: So basically what we have is we have two chambers … [SCREECHING OF MARKERS ON A WHITE BOARD] LUCCI: … and we’ve got salt water. [SCREECHING OF MARKERS ON A WHITE BOARD AND THE SOUND OF RUNNING WATER] LUCCI: And we’re taking the salt water, and we got a positive charge here, negative charge here. We’re putting tap water into the chambers. As we’re pumping the salt water through in between these chambers, the chloride ions migrating into here and the sodium ions are migrating here. When the chloride ion hits the
