acid concentrations in Bru'n

I have started using Bru'n to work out my desired water profiles. I have some very alkaline water with very low sulfates/chlorides, so I will be adjusting pH with acid solutions.

When %, I am assuming that inputs for acid concentrations are vol/vol?

However, even inputting both the known the % vol and Molarity values for a given acid solution, I get very different results for component additions. In my case this happens to be sulfates.

What units/method are you guys using to specify acid concentrations?

The acid concentration is reported with the acid. You are just duplicating what the container says. For instance, lactic acid is frequently sold at 88% concentration in the US. Phosphoric acid might be sold in 85, 75, or 10% concentrations. And any of these acids can be diluted with distilled water from the concentration shown on the container to a lesser concentration for safety.

The same thing can be said for strong acids that may be sold with their concentration reported as N (normality) or M (molarity). For instance, hydrochloric or sulfuric acids are frequently sold with those designations.

So are you using sulfuric acid? You need to know what that acid concentration was reported as on the container in order to use it effectively. Just duplicate what is reported on the container in the acid section of Bru'n Water.

mabrungard said:

The acid concentration is reported with the acid. You are just duplicating what the container says. For instance, lactic acid is frequently sold at 88% concentration in the US. Phosphoric acid might be sold in 85, 75, or 10% concentrations. And any of these acids can be diluted with distilled water from the concentration shown on the container to a lesser concentration for safety.

The same thing can be said for strong acids that may be sold with their concentration reported as N (normality) or M (molarity). For instance, hydrochloric or sulfuric acids are frequently sold with those designations.

So are you using sulfuric acid? You need to know what that acid concentration was reported as on the container in order to use it effectively. Just duplicate what is reported on the container in the acid section of Bru'n Water.

Click to expand...

Thanks for responding so quickly, Martin.

This all started when I ordered up several bottles of various solutions and noted that you can buy by percent weight or percent volume. I am assuming your percent calcs are percent volume.

My particular sulfuric solution can be specified equivalently as 10% w/w, 5.9 % v/v or 1.1M. If I input 5.9%, I get about 35 ppm sulfate additions for my particular water and grain bill. If I enter 1.1M, I get about 27 ppm in sulfate additions. I just wanted to make sure this is just conversion factor noise and that I wasn't using the wrong methodology.

My water report is this BTW:

Ca-60.0 Mg-8.0 Na-10.0 SO4-18.0 Cl-13.0 HCO3-204.3

As you can see I am constrained by calcium when trying to raise my sulfates significantly for hoppy beers, so every ppm counts. As a result, I am hoping that the %v/v method is a bit closer to reality than the M method.