If there's one "rule" to follow while preparing a brine for lacto-fermentation, it's not to use water with chlorine. Chlorine will negatively affect the ferment and yield poor results. The problem is that for most of us municipal tap water is the most accessible and it almost always contains chlorine or chloramine. This "no chlorine" rule can turn-off some beginner fermenters, but it's an easy issue to get around. You can use bottled spring water (make sure it's chlorine-free) or you may already have a filter on your tap that removes chlorine. If none of the above appeals or applies to you, try out these 3 easy ways to remove chlorine.The other rule is not to use iodized salt, which we address in this blog post. The colder the water, the more gasses it contains. By boiling water on the stove for 20 minutes, the water will degas and chlorine will evaporate. Before you use the water in a ferment or any other fermentation-related activity, ensure it cools to room temperature first.
Leave the water outside in the sun for 24 hours so the chlorine naturally evaporates in an off-gassing process. This is easy, but takes time and leaves the water subject to other possible contaminates, so be mindful of where and how you leave it. It's a great option for people who require a lot of brine because they're fermenting multiple batches at once. Vitamin C is often used to remove chlorine and chloramine from large amounts of water, like pools, hot tubs and baths, but it can be used in drinking water too. The downside is you need to buy vitamin C tablets or powder and it can decrease the pH levels of the water, but if used in small quantities it's suitable for fermentation. Best of all, it will remove chloramine, which some municipalities use instead of chlorine because it's more resilient. However, you will need a higher amount of vitamin C to remove chloramine. Approximately 40 mg will dechlorinate 1 gallon of water. Get other great fermentation tips in our video workshop with fermentation expert, Sandor Katz.
Click here to watch.Checkout our Complete Fermentation Kit: it has everything you need to start fermenting small batches in Mason jars! Click here to shop.In certain applications it may be desirable to use an entirely different chemical reagent to destroy the chlorine, this reagent is ascorbic acid, commonly known as, Vitamin C or our Tramfloc Ascorbic Granules. Ascorbic acid is applied as a granular material (Tramfloc Ascorbic Granules) to create a solution which is fed to a chlorinated stream to completely destroy the chlorine. In certain regulatory environments ascorbic acid is the preferred dechlorinating agent because our material is so benign and is actually beneficial to aquatic plants and animals. The end-user would be wise to consult the regulators in his locality to determine which of our reagents would be the most acceptable in a specific dechlorination application. We use a stoichiometric dosage of 4 ppm granules/1 ppm Cl2. For feeding techniques and dosage information, please contact Tramfloc, Inc.
For additional information about these three dechlorination reagents, please see our Dechlorination Chemicals sectionon the home page and review both the Tramfloc MSDS and Technical Information Bulletins. Please contact our technical department for recommendations for your specific application details, product dosage and project cost estimates. Regulators are increasingly requiring contractors to apply on ascorbic acid granules due to safety and environmental concerns about other chemical reagents, even if these other chemicals are known to be benign. While treatment costs with ascorbic acid, Tramfloc Ascorbic Granules. tend to be higher than the our tablet or liquid costs, the regulators usually always give their unqualified preference and approval to this special “Vitamin C” reagent. Please be sure to review the home page menu about our “H2O Neutralizer Device” which is used to deliver the dechlorinating solution made from: liquid Tramfloc® 905, Dechlorination Tablets or Dechlorination Ascorbic Granules/Tablets.
This device is used to accurately apply the selected dechlorinating solution at the optimum dosage rate to produce complete chlorine destruction with the lowest reagent usage to control your costs. Calcium thiosulfate is a clear crystalline substance, with little color, a faintly sulfurous odor and near neutral pH. It reacts with free as well as combined chlorine. One concern with using calcium thiosulfate is that dechlorination reactions using stoichiometric concentrations require nearly five minutes for complete neutralization (6). Over-dosing of calcium thiosulfate may produce milky-colored suspended solids, causing turbidity violations. Also, excess thiosulfate release may promote thiobacillus bacterial growth. Sodium thiosulfate is a colorless, transparent monoclinic crystal widely used by municipalities for dechlorination. It undergoes multiple reactions with free and combined chlorine, depending on solution pH (1,3). Sodium thiosulfate is a skin, eye, nose and throat irritant.
It has a NFPA Rating of 1,0, 0 for health, fire and reactivity, respectively. An EPA toxicity study indicated that sodium thiosulfate is not very toxic to aquatic species. Sodium thiosulfate may react slowly with chlorine under some conditions, and requires more time for dechlorination than most dechlorination chemicals (4). Over-dechlorination with sodium thiosulfate may encourage thiobacillus and some other bacterial growth in receiving streams, particularly during low flow conditions. (*) and (**) From Guidance Manual for Disposal of Chlorinated Water, AWWA Research FoundationHome / Shop by Brand / VitaShower International LLC / VitaBath Email to a FriendThere is an excessive amount of traffic coming from your Region. What may be causing this? You are attempting to access this page via a Webhosting Account Scripted access to public pages is not allowed. You are accessing the web via a proxy. If you are using a public proxy, you may wish to switch to another or disable it.