90-09: Hypohalous Acid and Haloamine Flashoff in Industrial Evaporative Cooling

The application of hypohalous acids and haloamines as industrial antimicrobials for evaporative cooling systems is an essential technology.  One process that can affect the fate of oxidizing halogen in recirculating cooling water is flash-off (forced-air stripping).  However, flash-off of bromine has never been studied.  This subject is important because of the increasing use of bromine chemistry for industrial water treatment.  Quantitative volatility comparison of hypohalous acids and certain haloamines were obtained by determining the Henry's law constant (air-water partition coefficient) in air-stripping towers.  The order of decreasing volatility is ozone > chloramines > hypochlorous acid. hypobromous acid, where ozone is about 167,000 times more volatile than bromine at 20 oC.  The data show that hypobromous acid is the least volatile oxidizing industrial in use today.