On a recent test I found a FreshWater(R) II unit. It is an Ozone generator for pools and I'm seeing they are also used for hot tubs and Jacuzzi's. The EPA and the American Lung Association conclude introducing Ozone into the air is a pollutant.
Several questions:
1) Is introducing Ozone into the water we swim and relax in also a pollutant we need to be concerned about?
2) Do these units run the whole time the pool pump is running?
3) Does the Ozone dissipate from the water? What amount of time?
4) What is the electrical consumption of an Ozone generator?
You should start with the manufacturer of the product first. They have tne true answers, while on Usenet you get n-1 opinions where n = number of posts in the thread.
Do you even know what Ozone is? O3 (3 molecules of oxygen)
Thus the question is one of water chemistry. Since water is H2O and is comprised of 2 oxygen atoms one may surmise that 2 + 3 = 5 atoms of oxygen bond with the hydrogen to from H5O. However, that may not be sound as the Hydrogen atom may not bond with all 5 oxygen atoms. Some oxygen atoms may be lost to the surrounding atmosphere.
The vendor is the last to consult, a physicist withe expertise in chemist should be consulted preferrably a person with engineering and chemistry experience. Then go back to the vendor keeping what you've learned from others under your hat to determine the veracity of their knowledge --and-- their truthfullness.
The mastery of physics is how we know what likely occurred on 9-11 but bringing the perpetratirs and those who collaborate with them as domestic enemies remains a problem as American men have become sissified.
Which is not necessarily going to occur when adding ozone into pool water.
Your white blood cells produce ozone to fight off infection. Swelling and inflammation are the site specific responses.
I know of people that use only ozone for whole-pool disinfection. But most people don't have units that large, and would not care to maintain them. Most people use bromine in their pools, and use ozone to "reactivate" the bromine, the ozone being entirely consumed in the process. Bromine has less tendency to evaporate than does chlorine, at any given temperature / pressure.
Usually. It could be set up to only run when a timer says to do it.
Depends on the temperature. Ultrapure water at 68 degF, had half its ozone left in 3 - 4 hours. Small doses in "normal" water are gone in a few minutes.
Depends on the ozone generator. Usually units are available for 120v or 220v. As far as efficiency, making ozone in air ~600 watts for a day will get you one pound of ozone produced. Making ozone in oxygen (with just a trace of nitrogen) will only require ~300 watts for a pound of ozone. This excludes power supplied to whatever air preparation system the generator might require. Note that "watts" does not correlate directly to amps. I worked for a company whose products took ~1 kVA to make one pound of ozone a day in air. No power factor correction.
Ozone is safe (it's by-product is oxygen). Several water treatment plants here in the US use Ozone to purify the municipal water supplies. It's half-life is 22 minutes and if it can't find anything to oxidize with it would just dissipate in the water by itself. Normally in a swimming pool it's used up in seconds.
It's disadvantages are *initial cost of the unit*, doesn't kill algae, you should retain a residual of chemicals in the pool (I've seen recommendations of 0.5-1.0 ppm of chlorine or 1.5-2.5 ppm of bromine) or keep the unit running 24/7; remember it only works when the pump is running. Advantages are it disinfects much faster and better than chemicals and eliminates chloramines in the water.
Ozone can damage the lungs. Ozone in blood has been tied to plaque blockages in arteries. It does not support your blanket statement of "safe". Ozone is not a long-lived systemic poison, very true.
Depends on temperature, pH, and impurities (instantaneous demand).
It does kill *any* single celled organism, including algae. You have been reading Del Ozone's press releases again. ;>) What it does not do, in conjunction with your statement of not lasting more than seconds in pool water, is be present in sufficient concentrations around the edge of the pool to do algae any harm.
Additionally, if the ozone is made in air, rather than pure oxygen, then the oxygen levels in the pool are depressed slightly. This serves to help algae growth, since for algae, oxygen is its waste product.
Still need either chlorine or bromine present. Good to have those numbers.
Yes,,,, in amount greater that 0.05 ppm, in confined air space (closed room or space) it can cause irritation of the mucous membranes, and if Inhaled as a pure gas can cause sufficient irritation to the lungs to result in pulmonary edema. This would never occur in its dissolved state in open pool water however.
You drink bottled water don't you? Care to guess one of the methods used to purify it? The FDA's guidelines for bottled water are 0.1 part per million ozone water solution in an enclosed system for at least 5 minutes. (Remember that's a sealed container, not a swimming pool open to the air).
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration has accepted ozone as being safe. If the FDA has no problem with it, why do you??????? Are you saying that it's NOT safe? What is your basis for such an argument?
It's used to treat the food we eat and water we drink. See anyone getting sick?
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Public pools in the US use ozone (I don't have a complete list, but one I'm aware is Fairhope, Alabama.) The US Navy's Dolphin program uses ozone. It's also used in hospitals for their therapy pools and the like.
If your trying to find a great evil in ozone purification, you stand alone, I'm afraid. It's in world-wide use (over 95% of all potable water in Western Europe) and there are no significant side effects reported.
I'm afraid that your argument just doesn't hold water It's safe.
Your concern about "0.05 ppm in a confined space" is naive. 0.05 ppm is some limit. If it happens to be in open atmosphere, it is just not an _OSHA_ problem. Splashing pool water that has *dissolved ozone* will air strip ozone into the air. Very unlikely to occur in normal circusmstances, as we both agree.
I *know*. I have designed, sold, and installed ozone generators for this purpose. And due to splashing of the bottle filler, and an obscenely high DO3 level, ozone gas is stripped out into the air near the filler, violating said OSHA limits in some cases.
I have drunk water with ozone at 0.6 ppm or higher. I have breathed some gas from ozone generators making 12 wt%. I have swam in a pool with dissolved ozone present.
My only quibble is that you used the word "safe" as a blanket. It is a medical hazard, acknowledged by agencies the world over. It *is* safe at "normal" levels, in specific circumstances, such as a pool's filtration system. But the OP was specifically asking about ozone as a "pollutant" too.
Safe as a food *processing* additive. Recognized as a "suspected carcingoen" by the US-EPA.
Let's see. Let's use your words:
irritation of the mucous membranes,
pulmonary edema
Sound "safe" with *no* qualifiers?
Look up insufflation history of medical ozone. Which is not "eating" or "drinking", and was really a rupture of internal organs from a pumped gas, and not ozone per se. But was a death. And OSHA has recorded incidents of people with horribly scarred lungs, again not associated with "swimming in a pool or hot tub".
Literally thousands. Probably tens of thousands in the US alone. I installed one in a pool in Colorado, to activate the natural bromide in a mountain stream that was partially diverted to keep the pool water level and fresh.
It is safe, in a pool, in limited amounts. It is safe, in processing water, in limited amounts. It is safe / necessary in the tropopause, or where people are not located.
"In all things moderation."
Let's put one pound per day of ozone into a four seater hot tub. Temperature such that flesh survives. pH such that flesh survives. Let's not add any other chemical, to save money, since the ozone will do all sanitzation. Turn on the jets. Is the room going to exceed
Depends on the decay rate. In only 500 gallons (say), 1 ppd could potentially get the dissolved ozone well over 5 ppm, but probably around 1 or so, enough to really "stink up" the air of the room it is in, with or without aeration jets. I put ozone-in-oxygen into 47,000 gallons of cold ultrapure water, and maintained a residual of ~0.5ppm with less than 6 ppd.
And keep in mind this was supposed to be a lesson in "moderation", indicating that 1 ppd is an obscenely oversized unit for such a small body of water, one that has no significant outflow. Hot tub UV units are usually in the range of 1 mg/SL (usually less), rather than 19 mg/ SL, and hot tubs usually depend on temperature and instantaneous demand for control of ozone levels (to basically zero). With any sigificant dissolved ozone levels, the finish on the fiberglass would be damaged by the ozone.
In a standard setup, no ozone survives into the hot tub. So *in moderation* ozone never touches the fiberglass. An ORP sensor can assure that the ozone generator is never turned on unless the ORP is low enough to indicate a need for oxidant. Which pools can afford, and hot tubs usually cannot... so hot tubs rely on a unit that is "too small to do harm" (or dump and dose with different chemicals).
As you are aware, ozone "prefers the taste" of carbon-carbon double bonds. Which epoxies (the usual binder for many laminate structures, such as fiberlgass) have. Chlorine tends to only glom on to single bonds, which epoxy can spare... for a while. But chlorine tends to survive into the water, actually coming into contact with the fiberlgass, where ozone (in moderation) does not. So chlorine has the opportunity, where ozone usually does not.
Now as to the finish glazing on the fiberglass... ;>) There are fiberglass vessels that use a PE liner, where dissolved ozone levels are 1 ppm or less, and are usually rated for a year of use with "no effect". So a lot depends on the application.
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