Re: CO2 reactor

To: Aquatic-Plants at actwin_com
Subject: Re: CO2 reactor
From: jsprag at srv_net (John Sprague)
Date: Wed, 24 May 1995 16:29:42 -0600
>I'm not really interested in increasing the CO2's length of "submersion" by
>forcing the spray bar to spray it out at a low level in the tank--I'm more
>interested in coming up with a system (using pressure) to dissolve the CO2
>forcibly....rather than just introducing the CO2 and hoping it dissolves via
>long exposure to water (like I'm doing right now).
>
Maybe I wasn't very clear in my original reply about using a canister filter 
for a reactor.  The only reason I put the spray bar at the bottom of the 
tank is so that the water with the CO2 dissolved in it isn't splashing about 
on the surface losing all the recently added CO2.  No bubbles come out of 
the spray bar because the CO2 is completely dissolved into the water in the 
filter.  The design of the canister filter precludes any gasses from coming 
out because the discharge is from the bottom of the canister while the gas 
is on top.  There is barely any water displaced (not even noticeable) by the 
CO2 because it dissolves so fast.  Messing around with my needle valve one 
time I sent so much CO2 into the filter that it was half full of gas, yet in 
less than a minute it was all dissolved into the incoming water with no 
bubbles coming out.  This points out that the canister filter easily has the 
capacity to handle a large amount of CO2, so you don't need to worry about 
gas binding of the pump in there.  Again, I'm not saying that it is the 
optimal reactor (it may be, but I don't know) but it has the advantage of 
being both a filter and a gas reactor at once, and isn't too expensive.