Hydrogen Peroxide

[Ducatiboy stu]

Recently I managed to get onto some high grade Hydrogen Peroxide (H2O2 ) wich is 50% pure..

It is basically the same stuff that Ross uses as well

I dilute it 30ml to 1ltr of water and it makes a fantastic santizer.

But it does some wierd stuff.....if you spray it onto wood it foams up, turns your skin white, stings like hell on cuts, is antiseptic and when diluted it bubbles up in the container and actually pressurises.it is still bubbling 3 days latter :unsure:

It also can be used to oxygenate aqaurium water.....

This got me thinking that if it produced oxygen bubbles in my sanitizer container, and was good for fish, could it be used as a safe and effective wort oxygen source as it breaks down into oxygen and water only.

Pumpy....

It is almost as good as Napi-San.... :lol:

 

[goatherder]

Great idea Pumpy.

So the clincher will be "how much do we need"?

According to Ray Daniels, yeast needs between 5 and 12 ppm oxygen in the wort.

Any chemist types want to take a guess for us?

 

[DJR]

Problem for aeration is that it releases a free oxygen atom rather than a oxygen molecule, so it would also oxidise anything that came in contact with it.

See http://www.brewingtechniques.com/library/b...4.6/miller.html

To answer your second question, I consulted my friend Dr. George Fix, author of The Principles of Brewing Science (1). Based on his answer, I would not even try to use peroxide as a substitute for an aerating stone. Here's why.

Hydrogen peroxide is basically a water molecule with a second oxygen atom loosely attached. That loose oxygen is highly reactive and makes peroxide a powerful sanitizer. As you might expect, adding a dose of sanitizer to a freshly pitched wort clashes with the mission of your yeast. When Dr. Fix tried using peroxide to oxygenate wort, he managed to kill most of the yeast rather than make it grow. The resulting fermentation was typically problematic - long lag period, slow and incomplete attenuation, high levels of by-products, and so forth. Based on Dr. Fix's findings, I do not recommend peroxide as a substitute for air or oxygen in cold wort, and I see no point in calculating the volume of H2O2 required.

 

[Ducatiboy stu]

Well that makes a lot of sense..

I know that the reason Hydrogen Peroxide is such an effective sanitizer is that it oxidises ( burns ) the bacteria cell walls and just about anything else in comes in contact with..

But is still seems OK for use in fish farms and hydroponics...