Pool Care: Beauty of Using Potassium Monopersulfate for Your Pool

UPDATED: Nov 01, 2019.

For many decades, people have always used chlorine on a regular basis to shock their pools. Shocking boasts the sanitizer level of your pool to kill off all bacteria and other organisms. Slowly, people are shifting to potassium monopersulfate (MPS or KMPS) as their main product for shocking their swimming pool.

What is potassium monopersulfate?

MPS is an effective non-chlorine oxidizer that has a chemical formula of KHS05. Actually, it is one of the strongest oxidants in the world and has oxidation potential just like chlorine. In addition to being a great oxidizer, there are other important things that it will provide you.

What are these things that you will enjoy?

When you use chlorine to oxidize your pool, it usually reacts with organic wastes and swimmer, which produce chloramines. This is because simmers and other organic matters are mainly nitrogen based elements. These chloramines often have a nasty smell and are quite unpleasant.

MPS also reacts with all nitrogen-based elements introduced by swimmers, but since it doesn’t feature chlorine, it won’t form chloramines as a byproduct. In fact, KMPS oxidizes chloramines and urea, the active element in urine. It often reacts slowly with ammonia.

Potassium Monopersulfate lifetime in your pool will depend on the number of oxidizable elements in your pool. This is because KMPS is not sensitive to sun rays as chlorine. You might know that about 90% of unstabilized chlorine is decomposed by the sun within an hour. MPS only decompose 23% every hour, meaning that it will last longer.

Benefits of KMPS

One of the main benefits of KMPS is that you can dive into your pool immediately after adding it – often after 30 minutes. Also, this product dissolves easily and doesn’t fade your pool’s liners.

Also, MPS works effectively with chlorine, mainly allowing it to work more effectively as a sanitizer. Furthermore, you can use KMPS for your indoor facility, where there is no wind or sunlight to help break it down and carry away chlorine.

To use it indoor, shock your swimming pool once per week.

KMPS Limitations

Although break down and oxidize chloramines and urea, it often produces nitrate ions. Just like phosphates, nitrate ions are delicious food for algae. Additionally, MPS reduces the pH as well as the total alkalinity of your swimming pool.

You should also note that MPS shows up as free chlorine in FAS-DPD test and as combined chlorine in DPD test. It usually oxidizes and reacts with these reagents. However, the interference can easily be removed.

Lastly, MPS is quite expensive. But this will depend on the quantity you buy and it ranges from $3 to $5 per pound.

Conclusion

The ideal shock dose of 1 pound per 10K gallons of water usually provides only 1/3 of the oxidizing ability of 1 pound of 65% calcium hypochlorite. And despite all its limitation, Potassium Monopersulfate does have its major uses. One thing you should keep in mind is that it’s a strong oxidant but not a sanitizer.