Advice for "aquarium" need (cooling water / technical setup / no fish)

[MnFish1]

The 'order' of things (pump - coil - small tank) is a good one. I am not sure how I connected it, but it is fairly easy to swap some tubing.

Yes the small tank needs to be big enough to hold its own water volume + the tube contents. However, I have valves installed, so I can easily close those, take an empty beaker and empty the tubing in it (or in the drain).

There is no actual mixing of the water between the tanks. I could add a food coloring to the big tank and the water in the small tank will remain colorless.

Disagree - but again - I hope you w8ll continue to post on the plan you have undertaken

 

[niels123]

Disagree - but again - I hope you w8ll continue to post on the plan you have undertaken

Yeah I'll post results (but not the lab results of course ;-) ). Only the "how the tank works" results.

What does Mn in your username mean? I guess it's not manganese?

 

[MnFish1]

The 'order' of things (pump - coil - small tank) is a good one. I am not sure how I connected it, but it is fairly easy to swap some tubing.

Yes the small tank needs to be big enough to hold its own water volume + the tube contents. However, I have valves installed, so I can easily close those, take an empty beaker and empty the tubing in it (or in the drain).

There is no actual mixing of the water between the tanks. I could add a food coloring to the big tank and the water in the small tank will remain colorless.

all good. am neither zombie nor engineer,

 

[niels123]

Finally an update. Other work in the lab caused some delay in testing. Here's the thing: you can see part the setup as a small tank of water with a pump placed outside of that small tank. The hoses that connect the pump that run into that small tank go via the ceiling. The result is a large volume of air inside these hoses. So first the pump needs to remove the air from the hoses/system and it fails to do this. It seems like it only compresses the air and its pressure is insufficient to remove the air. You can see a water column rising inside the hose for only about 30 cm...

My solution: Teco has coolers whose type end with H. They can heat and cool up to 5 Celcius. The coolers without H can only cool, but up to 0 Celcius (according to specs). Currently we are running a 1000H with an aquarium connected to a rotary evaporator (in case you're interested see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rotary_evaporator). The idea was to get the benefits from that cooler in the fumehood as well. Apparently the pumps are finding it difficult and I can see too much time in troubleshooting / tweaking this issue. Therefore we decided to get a Teco 500 (a smaller cooler that can go to 0C instead of 5C). This cooler will be connected to a Eheim 2400 that will be placed in air so the small tank can be cooled by the Teco 500. This *must* work The small tank is < 10 liters. The reason for choosing a 500 instead of 150 is that you have some capacity left for heat generated during reactions that must be kept cold.

There are 3 things that I wonder:

1) How low can you go with your volume (in liters per hour) and still have a happy cooler? If the tank is small and 500 liters / hour causes splashing...

2) What do people generally do with "incompatible" hose pillars? The Teco 500 has hose pillars for 16mm ID. My Eheim 2400 comes with G3/4" BSP thread so you can connect whatever you want, but out of factory it has a 19 and 24mm (I believe) hose pillar. Do people use adapters or change the piece that screws into the pump? I like as clean as possible (as few connections), but haven't been able to find a plastic G3/4" 16mm adapter with O-ring...

3) Any adapter with hose pillars has the risk of a hose coming off. In the lab it's (almost) required to use hose clamps on each connection. I've spoken to several aquarium stores and they all seem surprised, like, nobody uses hose clamps? Why use hose clamps, they never come off? Do people indeed just put the hose on and...that's it?

 

[MnFish1]

1) How low can you go with your volume (in liters per hour) and still have a happy cooler? If the tank is small and 500 liters / hour causes splashing...

I would check with the manufacturer.

2) What do people generally do with "incompatible" hose pillars? The Teco 500 has hose pillars for 16mm ID. My Eheim 2400 comes with G3/4" BSP thread so you can connect whatever you want, but out of factory it has a 19 and 24mm (I believe) hose pillar. Do people use adapters or change the piece that screws into the pump? I like as clean as possible (as few connections), but haven't been able to find a plastic G3/4" 16mm adapter with O-ring...

You can either use adapters or the company often has a new connector with the size you want. Also - usually, you can push the hose further onto the tip to make it fit.

3) Any adapter with hose pillars has the risk of a hose coming off. In the lab it's (almost) required to use hose clamps on each connection. I've spoken to several aquarium stores and they all seem surprised, like, nobody uses hose clamps? Why use hose clamps, they never come off? Do people indeed just put the hose on and...that's it?

A lot of people use clamps - or zip ties. It depends on whether the water inside is under pressure (I would use some kind of clamp - or just draining by gravity as well.

 

[niels123]

Another update:

My Teco 1000 is now running with an Eheim 1200 with 30% ethylene glycol in water. The oT is set to +12 and the chiller to +6. The coolant gets about negative 5 Celcius (23F), which seems to be the limit. I find this surprising: it can cool 1m3 to 5 degrees Celcius below ambient temperatures, but it has trouble to cool 3 liters to 25 degrees Celcius below ambient temps....

 

[ZombieEngineer]

I find this surprising: it can cool 1m3 to 5 degrees Celcius below ambient temperatures, but it has trouble to cool 3 liters to 25 degrees Celcius below ambient temps....

Shouldn't be all that surprising. You are approaching the absolute temperature delta limit of the working fluid. If you used the same chiller with 20 liters the temperature delta would be similar.

Air conditioners, which are a similar principle hit this limit around 30F/18C if you dramatically oversized (ex 5 ton unit in a 1 bedroom apartment).

 

[niels123]

Shouldn't be all that surprising. You are approaching the absolute temperature delta limit of the working fluid. If you used the same chiller with 20 liters the temperature delta would be similar.

Air conditioners, which are a similar principle hit this limit around 30F/18C if you dramatically oversized (ex 5 ton unit in a 1 bedroom apartment).

That does make sense and I didn't know this. I'm not an engineer
Now we can focus on the chemistry