Pool Water Experiment

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Aim The aim of this research assignment is to investigate and determine if the pH of pool water will have an effect on the sanitising efficiency of chlorine in the pool. Hypothesis Introduction Often when cleaning the pools as a child I would remember always adding chlorine to the pool to ensure that it was kept clean, but even with this, the pool was often found to still go murky or it would irritate our skin. The adding of more chlorine didn’t sort the problem out. Swimming pool water quality needs to be maintained to ensure that pollutants are removed or controlled. Pollutants such as body wastes, algae and disease-causing bacteria. To ensure water quality chemicals need to be used. I heard that if the pH of the pool water if too…show more content…
HOCl disassociates to form hydrogen ions and hypochlorite ion. But this reaction is reversible as seen bellow. HOCI (aq) ↔ H+ (aq) + OCI- (aq) If the pH of the pool water is lowered that means that the water will have a pH below 7 and therefore be acidic. There will be more H+ ions in solution that will react with the remaining OCl-. It will form more HOCl and therefore the concentration of HOCl will increase. The pH can be raised by adding a base and then the extra hydroxide ions will react with the remaining H+ ions to form water and the pH level will rise. The available HOCl disassociates to form more H+ and OCl- to compensate for the loss of the H+ in the forming of water.(Le Chatelier's principle) The ideal equilibrium distribution is equal concentrations of HOCI and OCI- Bellow is a table showing the optimum pH the water would need to be to ensure equal concerntrations of both OCl and HOCl-. As seen in the table below a pH of 7,5 is where the perfect equillibrium can be found. If the pH is below 7,5 then the high concentration of HOCl can be irritating to the eyes of swimmers, and in acidic conditions algae grows and thrives, as well as disease-causing

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