Heat Exchanger

aaron1818 · May 30, 2020

hi guys,

I'm busy designing a 19 000 gallon saltwater aquarium.
I've got a wet dry filtration system with a sump. I plan on putting the heat exchanger in the sump.
I've got to keep my water temperature at 64.4 degrees Fahrenheit give or take 1.8 degrees.
I plan on keeping the aquarium in an air conditioned room at room temp.

Any tips or help with designing the heat exchanger will be much appreciated!
Let me know if you want any more info

Lasse · May 30, 2020

aaron1818 said:
hi guys,

I'm busy designing a 19 000 gallon saltwater aquarium.
I've got a wet dry filtration system with a sump. I plan on putting the heat exchanger in the sump.
I've got to keep my water temperature at 64.4 degrees Fahrenheit give or take 1.8 degrees.
I plan on keeping the aquarium in an air conditioned room at room temp.

Any tips or help with designing the heat exchanger will be much appreciated!
Let me know if you want any more info

Are you looking for a professional solution - contact Alfa Laval or similar business - they have plate heat exchangers made of Titan. If you looking for a DIY solution - look at that type of aluminium tubes (with plastic cover) that´s in use for floor heating. If you have access to a cooling (or heating) liquid (from a heat pump as an example) is rather easy to form these as a spiral an have a contra direct flow through the spiral in the sump. A simple solenoid - a regulation mechanism including PID regulation will fix it. If you need both heat and cooling - either cold exchange + heater or one cold exchanger and one heat exchanger is needed. Tips - a GHL profilux P4 is a very good regulation device with a simple (but effective) sort of PID regulation and possibility to two different nominal values to the same physical temperature probe

Sincerely Lasse

Ron Reefman · May 30, 2020

A 19,000 gallon home aquarium? What are the dimensions?

ca1ore · May 30, 2020

Assuming 19,000 gallons and 64 degrees aren’t typos ..... and depending on where you live .... that’s a massive amount of cooling. Heating with an exchanger using a loop off your home water heater is doable, but where are you going to source the cold water for cooling? Even a really large chiller like the tradewinds commercial 3HP unit won’t be enough for a tank of that volume.

I’ve been thinking (for a while now) about my ‘next’ tank and have concluded that 1,500-2,000, gallons in the practical maximum for a home system.