How is bleach made

More from Clorox experts. Question What is bleach? Subscribe for tips and offers. Sign up for Clorox newsletter Get cleaning tips, product updates, promotional offers and more to your inbox. You're in! This is the beginning of something great. This is then poured into bottles and containers, sealed and shipped.

A reputed brand will use high-quality raw materials and will ensure that the manufacturing process is followed precisely. Finally, no corners will be cut when it comes to testing and quality control to ensure that the bleach you get is of a great standard. There are other chemicals as well that have properties similar to that of sodium hypochlorite and can be technically used as bleach.

Always buy the most recently manufactured bleach that you can lay your hands on. This is very important as it can mean all the difference between an effective disinfectant and a useless bottle of liquid. Finally, understand the risks associated with chemical bleach and never use it in a manner that can be harmful to you or those around you. Also, a word of warning. Do not try to replicate the manufacturing process mentioned here at home.

This broad-spectrum attack makes bleach effective against a wide-range of bacteria. Sodium hypochlorite is alkaline, and household bleach also contains NaOH to make the solution even more alkaline. Two substances are formed when sodium hypochlorite dissolves in water. These are hypochlorous acid HOCl and the hypochlorite ion OCl - , with the ratio of the two being determined by the pH of the water.

Bleach is generally very safe if handled with respect. In the Royal Society for the Prevention of Accidents estimated that there are about accidents needing hospital treatment caused by sodium hypochlorite solutions each year in British homes. Most of these were due to drinking the solution by mistake often children drinking it from an unlabelled bottle , but many were also due to handling errors.

Sodium hypochlorite reacts with many reagents, even sunlight, to produce chlorine gas, which in enclosed environments can be a severe lung irritant. Because household bleach also contains NaOH caustic soda , contact with the skin will cause burns due to the NaOH destroying the fatty tissue and oils. This process is known as saponification, and is the method to manufacture soap. The fabrics were then spread out on the grass for weeks at a time.

This process was repeated five or six times until the desired whiteness was achieved. Next, the fabric was treated with sour milk or buttermilk, and again bucked and crofted. This method was lengthy and tedious, and it monopolized large tracts of land that could have been used for farming.

Late in the 18th century, scientists discovered a chemical that had the same effect as crofting, but yielded much quicker results. In , Swedish chemist Karl Wilhelm Scheele discovered the chemical element chlorine, a highly irritating, green-yellowish gaseous halogen.

In , the French scientist Claude Berthollet found that chlorine was an excellent whitening agent in fabrics. Some mill operators attempted to expose their fabrics to chlorine gas, but the process was so cumbersome and the fumes so strong that these attempts were soon abandoned. Near Paris, in the town of Javel, Berthollet began a small facility for the manufacture of a new product called "Eau de Javelle.

In , another bleaching powder was invented by Scottish chemist Charles Tennant. In the early years of the Industrial Revolution, his patented lime powder was widely used to whiten a variety of fabrics and paper products.

To make the bleaching powder, slaked lime lime treated with water was spread thinly over the concrete or lead floor of a large room. Chlorine gas was pumped into the room to be absorbed by the lime. Though an effective whitener, the powder was chemically unstable.

It was The raw materials for making household bleach are chlorine, caustic soda, and water. The chlorine and caustic soda are produced by putting direct current electricity through a sodium chloride salt solution in a process called electrolysis.

About this time, researchers found that injecting salt water with electrical current broke down the salt sodium chloride molecules and produced a compound called sodium hypochlorite. This discovery enabled the mass production of sodium hypochlorite, or chlorine, bleach. Today, bleach is found in nearly every household. It whitens fabrics and removes stains by a chemical reaction that breaks down the undesired color into smaller particles that can be easily removed by washing.

The two types of household bleach are chlorine bleach and peroxide bleach. Peroxide bleach was introduced in the s. Though it helps to remove stains, especially in higher wash temperatures, it will not bleach most colored materials and does not weaken fabrics, as does sodium hypochlorite bleach. Peroxide bleach does not disinfect and is commonly added to laundry detergents which are advertised as color-safe. It also has a longer shelf life than chlorine bleach. Peroxide bleach is more commonly used in Europe, where washing machines are manufactured with inner heating coils that can raise the water temperature to the boiling point.

The more common form of household bleach in the U. It is most effective in removing stains and disinfecting fabrics. Chlorine bleach is cheap to manufacture and effective in both warm and hot wash temperatures. However, it has strong chemical properties which can weaken textile fibers.