Drop Based Borate Test Kit.

[waterbear]

I tend to agree with chem geek as to what is in the kit. It is functionally going to give you the equivalent of the old (and I believe discontinued) Proteam borate test kit and will be the indicator dye (bromthymol blue, not bromcresol green) and mannitol. The test is time consuming and I really feel the LaMotte strips profise enough precision for borate testing in a pool (having tested MANY times with both the Proteam kit and the LaMotte strips and gotten resutls that were "close enough for government work" every time!

Perhaps giroup01 can comment on this. I know he has had some links with the company selling this but his sig now indicates he is retired.

However, it seems that private messages have been disabled in the fourm so I cannot contact him even though he is currently online.

[giroup01]

In a nutshell, the Proteam titration is a base-demand test, you’re increasing the pH of the sample to a certain point (in this case 7.6). It’s the opposite of the TA test in your Taylor kit where you’re lowering the pH (to 4.5). It uses a 20 mL sample size. 1 drop of titrant = 2 ppm as boron.

The Proteam kit has 4 reagents:

PS1 is sulfuric acid (an acid),
PS2 is bromothymol blue (a pH indicator, range 6.0 to 7.6),
PS3 is sodium hydroxide (a base) and
PS4 is mannitol (a sweetener, also known as a sugar alcohol).

To begin the Proteam test you need to adjust the pH of the sample to 7.6, this is done with PS1 (the acid), PS3 (the base) and PS2 (the pH indicator). The first blue color you get indicates pH 7.6.

When that’s done you add mannitol to the sample. Mannitol reacts with boric acid and forms a strong acid that drops the pH of the sample – hence the yellow color you observe if there is boron present.

From there you add the base drop wise (PS3) until you get back up to pH 7.6. That’s the second blue color you observe. The number of drops used to get there multiplied by 2 gives you the boron concentration in parts per million.

In your Taylor test kit you’ll discover that reagent R-0009 is sulfuric acid (like PS1) and reagent R-0010 is sodium hydroxide (like PS2). These Taylor reagents are more concentrated than Proteam’s counterparts, we therefore needed to find an “appropriate” sample volume and a corresponding drop equivalency . All you’re missing are mannitol and bromothymol blue, which we supply.

The biggest sample volume available with the Taylor gear is 44 mL with the comparator bloc of the K-2000 series kits. We wanted to keep things very simple, we didn’t want to get into diluting sample with DI water, didn’t want a sample volume of say 52.6 mL and things like that.

Testing with many different standardized boron solutions (and many pools using borates) were made with both the Proteam kit and the Taylor reagents. The equivalency of “1 drop = 4.5 ppm” was determined that way – it comes very very close (to within a drop) to Proteam’s kit.

Luckily, borates dosage is not critical, you’ll hear anything from 30 to 50 to 80 ppm.

The reagents supplied with our borates drop kit allow you to perform a titration test for borates using equipment you already have, so the cost of the kit is very very low, cheaper than the strips, and you get much better precision.

Using the popular SpeedStir stirrer speeds up the testing quite a bit.

[waterbear]

Thank you giroup01. Next question. The borate test add on can be shipped to the US, correct?

[giroup01]

I don't see why not, it's a low-value shipment (about $8 US), no hazmat, nothing toxic.

[rcy100]

Here is the kit

http://piscines-apollo.com/cubecart/...tes/p_129.html

and the instructions...you can see they are quite simple.

http://piscines-apollo.com/docs/ap_borates_en_ins.pdf

[chem geek]

I just bought the kit for shipment to the U.S. While the kit itself was $9.99 CAD, the shipping was $13.41 CAD. This was basically $24. It would be better to buy some other things to combine in the shipment, but I just thought I'd get this kit right now as I'm well-stocked with everything else I need for testing.

[PoolDoc]

Giroup,

Is the Piscines-Apollo store you? What happened to Lowry?

[rcy100]

The test is time consuming and I really feel the LaMotte strips profise enough precision for borate testing in a pool (having tested MANY times with both the Proteam kit and the LaMotte strips and gotten resutls that were "close enough for government work" every time!

Perhaps giroup01 can comment on this. I know he has had some links with the company selling this but his sig now indicates he is retired.

However, it seems that private messages have been disabled in the fourm so I cannot contact him even though he is currently online.

I did this test today, and it was not time consuming at all. The colour changes were easy to see and the instructions that came with the kit were concise and easy to follow.

I didn't even think to use my speed stir which I received at the same time. Oh well. Test indicated only 36ppm (I suspected I was low). I'm about to add three boxes of Mule Team and will retest in a couple days. This won't show accuracy, but it will show if the test kit works properly, as after adding three boxes, I should definitely get a higher reading when I test again.

[rcy100]

I did this test today, and it was not time consuming at all. The colour changes were easy to see and the instructions that came with the kit were concise and easy to follow.

I didn't even think to use my speed stir which I received at the same time. Oh well. Test indicated only 36ppm (I suspected I was low). I'm about to add three boxes of Mule Team and will retest in a couple days. This won't show accuracy, but it will show if the test kit works properly, as after adding three boxes, I should definitely get a higher reading when I test again.

Well, I'm impatient, so I went ahead and tested a couple hours after adding three boxes of Mule Team and 3.5 litres of muriatic acid. Now reading 46, so the borate test kit definitely does what it's supposed to do. My 10 year old daughter helped (the Speedstir was a big hit!!) so that should give you an indication of how easy the test is.

[waterbear]

I did this test today, and it was not time consuming at all. The colour changes were easy to see and the instructions that came with the kit were concise and easy to follow.

I was referring to the Proteam drop based kit where every drop of titrant is equal to 2 ppm boron (as opposed to 4.5 ppm boron for this kit and the Taylor acid and base demand reagents) so the test is about as time consuming as a calcium hardness titiration. When compared with the LaMotte borate strips (which Piscines-Apolo also sells), which take 15 seconds, it is a big time difference for not really that much more precision since the drop test is not being done with a pH meter as I will now explain. The color changes for bromthymol blue are not easy to determine as they go through the intermediate point and it is very important in this test tot only add enough sodium hydroxide to bring the pH to 7.6 (when the blue first appears). You cannot "add one more drop to make sure the color does not change anymore" since that will give you an inaccurate final titration and if you did not go all the way to the blue color but stopped at an intermediate endpoint you will also get inaccurate results. That is why this test is done in the laboratory with a pH meter and not an indicator dye.