Please do for the benefit of the members here.
So let’s have a look at the estimated CO2 absorption power of a vertical bubble reactor, compared to a pipe with same dimensions but then used as a horizontal reactor. The key point is that it is very
plausible that the horizontal reactor gives a higher CO2 absorption surface, and that a simplified model will suffice to illustrate that.
If we would like to make an accurate measurement of the absorption surface of a vertical bubble reactor, we could take a couple of photos and for each photo account for the number of bubbles and their size to calculate the accumulated surface area from CO2 bubble to water. We could compare that surface area to the length*width of the pipe, which would be the effective CO2 absorption area if the tube would be used in a horizontal configuration.
I dismantled my modified AquaMedic reactor a long time ago, when I had started using CO2 Spray Bar and more recently the horizontal reactor. Unfortunately I have no videos left, and just one poor quality photo – but it seems sufficient to make the point.
The reactor dimension 3 inch diameter * 10 inch length and I would typically count 100-150 bubbles with an average size of about 3 mm diameter. This is by no means an accurate accounting of the bubbles, but I will illustrate that it is good enough to make our conclusion ‘plausible’ (rather than a ‘proof’ in the scientific sense).
So let’s calculate how many bubbles of 3 mm diameter we need, to provide the same surface area as the pipe used in its horizontal configuration:
So if all bubbles would be 3 mm diameter, we would need 685 of them to provide the same CO2 to water absorption surface area as in a horizontal reactor.
This is 5 times more than the bubbles I actually observe in my bubble reactor.
We can take it a bit further, and investigate what happens if bubbles are not all 3 mm diameter, but some a bit bigger and some a bit smaller:
So if we have a mix of bubbles, ranging in size from 2.5 to 4 mm we will always need many more bubbles than the 100-150 that I actually counted in my vertical reactor, hence we expect the horizontal reactor to be significantly more powerful than the vertically oriented bubble reactor of the same dimensions.
When we are interested in the power / capacity of the reactor, we now also have some practical evidence what the horizontal reactor can deliver without much need for finetuning and optimizations as we would have to do with bubbles:
- @RickyV ramps up CO2 on a 1000 gallon tank, achieves 1.0 pH drop in 38 minutes
- @toofewfish ramps up CO2 on a 230 gallon tank, achieves 1.6 pH drop in 30 minutes
Try that with a vertical bubble reactor …
The above are of course much simplified estimations, and any other bubble reactor will of course be different from mine. But I hope I brought a convincing argument that horizontal reactors are likely to pack more punch than a vertical bubble reactor, both for large and small tanks.
- well done
