CO2 Spray Bar - a summary

[Koan]

Yours is very pretty and elegant

Yes! Can you post links to the pieces in your parts list?

 

[*Ci*]

Sure, @Koan, but these are Canadian sites. You can probably find the same things in the US, only cheaper!

Transparent tubes: Rebower 14" Clear Plastic Rigid Pipe
End caps: uxcell 1Pcs Pipe End Cap Fitting
Silicon plugs: Silicone Rubber Tapered Plug Assortment
(I find a lot of uses for these!)

I used thin CA glue to attach the end caps and regular 1/4” Co2 tubing jammed into a slightly smaller hole. Regular old black zip ties to attach.
The key was having somebody else do the cutting - I would have made a huge mess : )

 

[Koan]

End caps: uxcell 1Pcs Pipe End Cap Fitting

These are very sharp thank you! Here's that same product on Amazon US:






Uxcell pipe cap
Rebower clear tube

 

[Koan]

That looks fantastic! Great work!

I think we're in agreement that Ci has officially cracked the attractiveness code for this new reactor approach






Just like Aqua Rocks Colorado did with their stainless version of the first Yugang reactor !

So in the interest of supporting wider adoption for this new tool, can I request we now talk about a rebranding?

The "spray bar" filter return is not a tool that's widely used in high-end planted aquariums. Quite the opposite, the term calls up images of gunky, clumsy, BBA infested pinhole tubes made out of black or Eheim-green plastic .



Pretty much exactly counter to the open clean rimless aquarium aesthetic.

It is not a name that can immediately attract interest or make someone want to investigate further, let alone commercialize.

Also, this device is not actually a filter return!

What if we started calling it the "Yugang Open Reactor" instead?

 

[*Ci*]

“Yugang Open Flow Reactor”, maybe? I agree, the word “spraybar” doesn’t really describe the unit accurately.

 

[Mr.Shenanagins]

Black furniture grade glossy PVC I think blends in nicely with a black background but of course I’m partial since it’s how I’m setup I have made the spray bar work for me with holes on both sides to get as much flow as I can throughout the tank.

I have to agree, that clear setup is gorgeous.

 

[*Ci*]

In some private correspondence with @Yugang, he determined that my “68g with a 40”x 17” surface area = 438.709 mm2 surface area. Divided by 17.7 gives 24.785 mm2 for the CO2 Spray Bar. If we would use a 1 inch diameter tube, we would need it to be 976 mm long to have that surface area.
This calculation is for about 1.5 pH drop. What we know is that 0.3 pH drop corresponds to a factor of 2 in CO2 ppm, therefore for an estimated 1.2 pH drop we could do with 976/2 = 488 length of the 1 inch tube.”

To simplify:

For a 1.5 pH drop I need a 1”x 38” (976mm) tube.
For a 1.2 pH drop I would halve that to 19” (488mm)
For a 0.9 pH drop I can halve it again to 9.5” (244mm)

With 2 days of testing behind me, it is clear that my 14” (I mentioned 12” previously, but it is 14) reactor is giving me an almost exact 1 pt. drop in pH, which is just where I hoped it would be.
Very pleased with the outcome of this project!

 

[Yugang]

The name "Open Flow Reactor" was suggested, and indeed that seems to fit better than my original name CO2 Spray Bar.

 

[Yugang]

I received a couple of questions how CO2 Spray Bar / Open flow reactor compares to the old CO2 bell.

Fundamental feature of CO2 Spray Bar is the overflow. Other than a CO2 bell, the CO2 Spray Bar has a constant GEOMETRY, gas pocket always same volume so that the water/gas interface is always same and will not change with CO2 being consumed.

Then, because the overflow purges impurities from the CO2 gas pocket, we can assure a constant PURITY of the gas pocket, also this is different from the old school CO2 method.

Post in thread 'Horizontal CO2 Reactor - Yugang 鱼缸 Reactor'

Oct 8, 2023

Context

As described earlier, we could operate the reactor in three different ways

• Using a pH/CO2 controller for CO2 injection and stability
• Using a precision CO2 regulator to precisely adjust CO2 injection
• Overflow mode.

Most current users are either using a pH/CO2 controller or a precision CO2 regulator. There will be a reservoir of almost pure CO2 gas in the reactor, and the physics/chemistry of CO2 absorption into the water will be similar to any other reactor that may or may not use CO2 bubbles. As is also the case in bubble reactors, gradually we...

• Yugang

• 
• 

When both GEOMETRY and PURITY are stable, then we can be sure that CO2 INJECTION rate is stable. This rate of injection cannot be calculated from equilibrium values (Henry's law) as it is essentially a flow because we have NO equilibrium and the system wants to move towards equilibrium. This is why we use the same calculation principles as for the Horizontal Reactor / Yugang Reactor , ie a 17.7 ratio for a 1.5 pH drop and about 35 ratio for an estimated 1.2 pH drop, while for a traditional CO2 Bell we won't have a constant injection rate and it is not possible to have a precise calculated size and pH drop.

I hope this helps to clarify

 

[Yugang]

I am posting here to address a common misunderstanding regarding gases at room temperature, where it is thought that the heavier gas CO2 will accumulate at the bottom of a gas pocket. This was mentioned to me in a PM, in the context of the purging of gas in CO2 Spray Bar and Yugang reactor , but I also saw it mentioned at UKAPS.

Indeed, at very low temperatures gas molecules are hardly moving and in this case the heavier gases will accumulate at the bottom while light gases are mostly found in the higher layers.

However, at room temperature molecules move fast and heavier and less heavy gases will mix. For any significant concentration differences we would consider hundreds of meters, if not kilometres in the vertical direction, but certainly not centimetres or decimetres. This means that gas purging from the reactor will represent same mix of CO2 and other gases as anywhere else in that small gas pocket. It would be a misunderstanding to claim that CO2 would accumulate low in the reactors gas pocket, at room temperature as it is thought to be heavier than other gases.

And for UKAPS readers - CO2 will not accumulate just above the water in a tank, as it is thought to be heavy and would prefer not to diffuse into the ambients air. A mouse on your bedroom floor will not suffocate in the CO2 that you exhaled.

 

[Yugang]

I am posting here to address a common misunderstanding regarding gases at room temperature, where it is thought that the heavier gas CO2 will accumulate at the bottom of a gas pocket.

Attached paper reports CO2 concentration in the atmosphere. From figure 10 we see that concentration varies by less than 3% over 5 kilometres of elevation. Note these are relative concentrations in % or ppm, CO2 compared to other gases. Proximity to a CO2 source is more relevant than relative weight of gases. This is to say that this weight consideration is irrelevant for our tanks, or purging in a horizontal reactor.

How fast does CO2 gas off?

I am a bit confused. I am setting up a new aquarium (~400L netto) with a CO2 system. During a first test to see if I could get the CO2 level high enough with the equipment I have, I observed the following. Over a period of 9 hours the drop checker turned yellow. So I was pleased with that...

www.ukaps.org

Not correct, #10, as per the above.
Another common mistake (from PM's I received as well as this thread on UKAPS) is to assume that Henry's law tells us the rate of outgassing, while the reality is that Henry's law describes equilibrium when indeed gas concentrations are stable and flows balanced to nett zero. The rate of outgassing cannot be derived from Henry's law, only that gas flows are nett zero when Henry's law applies.

 

[JayP]

Finally reading over this after I saw someone post they were going to use one of these.

My question is and maybe this has been addressed and I missed it, for smaller tanks, what is the advantage, if any, of this vs just building a smaller version of the external horizontal reactor? My desire is to have as few pieces of equipment in the tank as possible.

 

[Kwyet]

Finally reading over this after I saw someone post they were going to use one of these.

My question is and maybe this has been addressed and I missed it, for smaller tanks, what is the advantage, if any, of this vs just building a smaller version of the external horizontal reactor? My desire is to have as few pieces of equipment in the tank as possible.

For me, this made it easy to have CO2 supplementation in a small aquarium without having to buy a canister filter. I could just position the outlet of a small internal filter so that the water flow runs beneath the Open Flow Reactor. If I was going to have a canister filter though, I would have used the horizontal reactor instead.

 

[JayP]

For me, this made it easy to have CO2 supplementation in a small aquarium without having to buy a canister filter. I could just position the outlet of a small internal filter so that the water flow runs beneath the Open Flow Reactor. If I was going to have a canister filter though, I would have used the horizontal reactor instead.

Ah, I didn't even think about not having a canister filter to push water through a reactor. I even use an Oase Filtosmart Thermo 100 on my UNS 30C.

 

[TianChen]

sir, this is just a dumb idea years later than the existence of yugang reactor but does anyone try to connect a peristaltic pump into the co2 vent of a co2 bell?

 

[Koan]

Hey Tian, can you help me understand your question? What would a dosing pump be used for in this situation?

 

[TianChen]

Hey Tian, can you help me understand your question? What would a dosing pump be used for in this situation?

Oh this is weird, if you know the co2 bell, the classic design, they have air vents on the side to control the gas/water interface -which acts similarly to the gas overflow of the yugang. When you pump water into the air vent, it rises the water level inside and increase the pressure of the bubble, thus also increase the dissolution of co2, and secondly it pushes the carbonated water out of the bell, increasing circulation

 

[Koan]

Haven't heard of that one Can you show some pics and some links?

 

[Count Krunk]

Oh this is weird, if you know the co2 bell, the classic design, they have air vents on the side to control the gas/water interface -which acts similarly to the gas overflow of the yugang. When you pump water into the air vent, it rises the water level inside and increase the pressure of the bubble, thus also increase the dissolution of co2, and secondly it pushes the carbonated water out of the bell, increasing circulation

Comrade, juice doesn't seem worth the squeeze here.

(Your avatar makes me think of you as a comrade.)