Chemical manufacturing process
Sodium hypochlorite NaClO

This involves chlorinating soda with chlorine gas. There are two chemical processes for manufacturing bleach.

• Standard procedure

  It reacts chlorine with a 20% soda solution and produces bleach with 13% active chlorine (previously known as "50˚ chlorometric"). All the sodium chloride by-product of the reaction remains dissolved in the solution.

• "High Title" process

  This original process, patented by Arkema, involves reacting chlorine with a 50% soda solution to produce bleach containing 24-26% active chlorine (previously known as "105˚ chlorometric"), in which half of the salt is removed by precipitation. Solutions with lower concentrations can then be prepared by dilution.

  The...