anyone built an evaporation cooler?

pwhitby

pwhitby

RC Sponsor
Team RC
Hi,

I am looking for plans to build an evaporation based cooler. The simplistic idea is a wind tunnel with a trickle plate or bioball type deal that allows high evaporation from the high surface area. The humid air is then vented directly outside the house.

It does get thru a lot of water, but on a 900g total system, its not too bad.

Anyone have plans or ideas?

Thanks

Paul.
 
look at overclockers.com and search for bong type evap coolers.

there were good ideas using a showerhead and 4" pvc you may get some ideas
 
my idea for a sorta high tech evaporation deal would be a 55 gallon aquarium, 18 plastic sheets cut to fit horizontally, and something to put inbetween each sheet so that they are each in inch apart.

Drills a bunch of holes in each sheet and just drip alot of water overthis, maybe the outake water from your skimmer to get rid of micro bubbles. There should be like 1/2 of space inbetween the sides and the sheet so gas can escape


Drill a bulkhead in the bottom of this to overflow the water out and back into your system. If you really wanted to get this going you could shine a high power light on it. You would get so much disolved O2 and lost CO2 with this system it would be rediculous
 
there would be alot of flow in there and there there wouldnt be anyplace for stuff to build up as long as no huge particales got in there, a showerhead would be alot easier though
 
my thoughts were injected water in to a chamber (using garden mister type sprinkler heads) this would flow thru a chamber filled with nylon mesh to increase surface area. One end would have a fan or fans in (under temp control) the other a vented panel connected to an outside airvent. The entire structure would be light proof to stop algae. The nylon is not porous enough to give great bacterial growth, just a superficial biofilm over the top of it.

any thoughts on this.
 
remember that you will be limited to ambient air temps when doing this. It will do you no good if your room air temp is 80+ degrees.
 
actually, it should be more humidity based.

Any substance that evaporates loses heat. The same principles applies to getting cold on a hot day when you exit a pool. So long as the substrte that the water runs over is not hot, then cooling is achieved.
 
<a href=showthread.php?s=&postid=7736231#post7736231 target=_blank>Originally posted</a> by pwhitby
The nylon is not porous enough to give great bacterial growth, just a superficial biofilm over the top of it.

any thoughts on this. [/B]
Click to expand...

Isn't that how bio balls and the like function? The surface film contains the bacteria for nitrification to occur.
 
Yes, thats true, but the deciding factor is total surface area.

The possibility that the high oxygen content may drive nitrate production is an issue.

The way round it is to reduce total substarte surface area, so maybe use plates of acrylic as opposed to nylon.
 
Yes I have heard of them, but they seem pretty expensive for not necessarily a great deal of technology or components.

A simple box fan over my sump helps keep temps low, but it does add a great deal of humidity in my garage. I considered venting it to the outside and encloing the sump....then was told about the eco coolers.

Similar idea, but more focussed to control evaporation.
 
Most likely, the unit would not run continuously, so the down time would let the media dry out. This would stop the biofilm. You could even have the fans run for a few minutes after the water flow shuts off to help dry it out.

Also, not sure how hot and humid it is outside in your area, but it may be less humid outside than by your tank. If so, you may wish to draw the air from outside, through the cooler, then blow it back outside.

The cooling you will get will be based on the wet bulb temperature of the air drawn through the cooler. In humid climates, the wet bulb may be pretty high, since the air is almost at saturation already. You can look at a pychrometric chart to see what the wet bulb is for a given dry bulb temp and humidity.

HTH
Chris
 
Thanks Chris.

My hope is that by using ambient garage air, it will decrease the ambient humidity by drawing air from outside to replace that which is vented.

Also, by feeding with water after the skimmer and refugium the biomass of the water will be less. I do like the idea of drying the plates after runs, but that may ultimately lead to fouling by salt creep.

P.
 
RicGio,
Hmm, may not be big enough:D I guess you didnt have one of those inside your sub? Plate and frame, or tube and shell? Fascinating machines, those "boats"! I've toured a few old DE subs. I cant imagine what a Nuke sub entails.

Paul, I see your point about the makeup air. My stuff is going into the garage as well, and I want to keep the RH down as much as possible.

I just wonder how different the RH will be between inside and outside. If you feed the cooling tower high RH air, it will not cool as well as it could with drier air. Which in your case will have to be a try it and see approach:)
 
Thinking further, The amount of air you will be using to get so much cooling will quickly equalize the garage air with the outdoor air. ...Which was your original point that I seemed to have missed, correct? :D
 
well, my ideas so far are to maximize water surface area while minimizing substrate surface area....(to keep nitrates down). I may get a "Reefkeeper" controller and use that with a couple of fans. Set each fan to come on at temperature intervals.....so say 1 fan at 79, 2 fans at 79.5 and 3 fans at 80.

The substrates im thinking of are sheets of eggcrating with water cascading down them. Essentially cut a sheet of acrylic and fit foam inserts that match the top of the eggcrate sheets so that water feeds directly onto the sheets and cascades down them. The fans would blow through the sheets and out the back. The water return would be gravity via a bulkhead. I was thinking of maybe 5-10 eggcrate plates at approx 18 by 18.

Paul.
 
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