I first heard of premixing AquaMira from BPL, back when they sold dropper bottles from the BPL store. I was intrigued, but continued to mix one batch at a time. I carried extra mixing caps to mix multiple batches.

In 2010, I met a couple thru-hiking the PCT. They began their thru-hike using a filter, switched to AquaMira around Kennedy Meadows and soon tired of waiting five minutes before adding it to their water. They began premixing a whole set of AquaMira into the empty bottles from the previous set. As we hiked along together, they could scoop and treat water on the go while I was encumbered with the mixing and waiting process. Anecdotally, they hadn’t gotten sick and I began to consider premixing.

In 2011, Mike Clelland published his book “Ultralight Backpackin Tips” in which he describes premixing a day’s (or weekend; I can’t remember) supply of AquaMira. This additional encouragement led me to trying the practice.

I tried premixing a day’s supply but was still curious about premixing more which lead me to testing the parts per million concentrations of Chlorine Dioxide in water treated with premixed AquaMira.

I purchased Chlorine Dioxide test strips formulated to measure 1 to 10 parts per million.

Next I premixed approximately 30 doses of AquaMira in an empty AquaMira bottle.

Over the next 33 days I compared the ppm concentration of Chlorine Dioxide in water treated with freshly mixed AquaMira against water treated with the premix.

Results:

I can only speculate why the CLO2 ppm in the premix was often greater than the CLO2 ppm in the fresh mix. Perhaps the fresh mix ‘off-gassed’ enough CLO2 during the 5 minute waiting period to account for the difference.

Although not unexpected, I can only speculate why the premixed ppm dropped off. Was it because of the passage of time or did it ‘off-gas’ each time the bottle was opened? There are a lot of variables unaccounted for: temperature, humidity, wind, atmospheric pressure, exact drop size, etc. USE THIS INFORMATION AT YOUR OWN RISK: IT IS ONLY ONE TEST OF CLO2 PPM IN WATER. IT IN NO WAY TESTS THE ACTUAL EFFECTIVENESS OF THE SOLUTION AGAINST PATHOGENS.



Typical results: Strip on right indicates greater CLO2 ppm than strip on left.


Hope this was interesting.

Edited by Lancem on 04/02/2013 20:08:05 MDT.

Lance,

That's how I wanted it to look.Thanks for showing me how to do that.