DIY Sulfur Denitrator

[siskiou]

Hi there!

I have taken the media out, and rinsed it, but it still smells very bad.
Plus the inside of the reactor, even after thorough rinsing, it really stinks!
Is that something to be concerned about?

I have enough fresh media to start over, but don't want to build a whole new reactor!

 

[Lonnie]

My ammonia kit is brand new & reads zero on fresh mixed water. The thing that made me wonder was the fact the reactor & tank were reading the same. If the reactor was higher, I would blame it as the cause.

I have been slowly increasing the flow & everything was zero prior to the last increase. Once I reached over 40ml/min I started to get a nitrate reading that did not go away quickly like the other increases. I have been slowly increasing flow over the past 2 weeks.

I have 2.75lb of sulfur in my reactor (with 6.6lb of aragonite) & it seemed to quickly recover with flow rate increases up to just over 30ml (about 11gal/day). It is having trouble above this rate (40ml) & after 3 days it still has not zeroed out. I just reduced flow as readings seemed to be getting worse over the past 2 days, instead of better. Went back to 30 this morning & it still hasn't fully recovered. (back to 5ppm nitrates now) Once it zeros again, I may jump to 35ml & see what happens.

Does anyone have an approximate flow rate that my reactor should max out at? I have enough media to put a second reactor online if necessary.

Does the flow rate capability correlate to the quantity of sulfur in the system, or to the quantity on the nitrates needed to be removed? From a technical standpoint, if I can reduce 40ppm to 0ppm at 30ml/min flow, could I reduce 20ppm to 0ppm at 60ml/min flow with the same setup?

 

[saltydog64]

<a href=showthread.php?s=&postid=14553785#post14553785 target=_blank>Originally posted</a> by siskiou
Hi there!

I have taken the media out, and rinsed it, but it still smells very bad.
Plus the inside of the reactor, even after thorough rinsing, it really stinks!
Is that something to be concerned about?

I have enough fresh media to start over, but don't want to build a whole new reactor!

Sis......

Looks like WE are in some uncharted territory here, so as we await perhaps dJ's input, let's try to solve it....how about putting some diluted bleach, carefully in the SR let it soak a couple of hours, rinsed it VERY thoughly, place it outside in that fresh Orgeon air for awhile bring back in and resinse it a couple more times and go from there....

Just soak the Sulfur in RO water overnight and see (smell it) what you have in a day or so......you waited this long to restart, a little longer is no big deal...

 

[tmz]

Lonnie, I believe the flow rate does correlate to the amount of sulfur.

Back in one of the links offered in the thread I recall it can run at 1 to 5 times the volume of sulfur. So with about 2.5 lbs( l liter) , it should work well at 1000ml to a max of 5000ml per hour or 16.6 ml per minute to 83 ml per minute, That's 24 liters(6 gallons ) per day minimum to 120 liters(30.7 gallons) maximum..

I run 3 liters of sulfur in mine and it has been producing 15000 ml per hour / 250ml per minute/ 360 liters (92 gallons per day). It did this on a 575 gallon system which had 80 ppm nitrate.

 

[siskiou]

<a href=showthread.php?s=&postid=14554010#post14554010 target=_blank>Originally posted</a> by saltydog64
.how about putting some diluted bleach, carefully in the SR let it soak a couple of hours, rinsed it VERY thoughly, place it outside in that fresh Orgeon air for awhile bring back in and resinse it a couple more times and go from there....

After letting it circulate with vinegar water over night (did nothing for the sufur smell), I'm currently trying the diluted bleach treatment.

I'll report in about the effect later...

 

[saltydog64]

<a href=showthread.php?s=&postid=14556882#post14556882 target=_blank>Originally posted</a> by siskiou
After letting it circulate with vinegar water over night (did nothing for the sufur smell), I'm currently trying the diluted bleach treatment.

I'll report in about the effect later...

sis.........

What a coincidence your recent posting has become.....just tested this am NO3 and is 8.9ppm ( LaMotte kit @ 2.0 x4.44) so it looks like we'll be running the SR again :mixed: :mixed:

I about to open the SR which has been idle for months...never rinsed, ect... so we'll see or is it smell ???

I'm following your progress closely............

 

[siskiou]

I know one thing: next time I'm taking the reactor offline, I will empty it out, rinse all the media and the reactor!

I'm also chucking the old sulfur, since there are a lot of black particles in with it, and I don't want to find out later that I was saving at the wrong end.
By the way, I was using the LSM media, and it did not fall apart or create any slime, so I can say it worked well for me and I'll be using it again this time.

 

[tmz]

The black particles could be sulfide and metal deposits from hydrogen sulfide activity. Best tor remove them.

 

[siskiou]

Yes, thanks!
I'm definitely not reusing the old sulfur. Too much of a risk.

 

[saltydog64]

<a href=showthread.php?s=&postid=14556957#post14556957 target=_blank>Originally posted</a> by siskiou
I know one thing: next time I'm taking the reactor offline, I will empty it out, rinse all the media and the reactor!

I'm also chucking the old sulfur, since there are a lot of black particles in with it, and I don't want to find out later that I was saving at the wrong end.
By the way, I was using the LSM media, and it did not fall apart or create any slime, so I can say it worked well for me and I'll be using it again this time.

sis...........

Ditto on all three points....I too used LSM and when I opened this am........first what a SKINK.....dj way back when, said something about removing the sulfur, rinsing it out, place it in storage....oh well next time we will know better, live and learn I guess, but what sulfur mained DIDNOT turn to mush, nor it fall apart.

One thing in my case that was very interesting is that the 4" SR with the ARM in it, most of the sulfur had been consumed by the bacteria, where as the 3" SR ( with no ARM ) the sulfur in there while it skinks was mostly still there...I guessing w/o any ARM there was very little bacteria left so the sulfur remained intact.

Any how right now both are outside soaking in bleach for overnight.....say I wonder if it's going to freeze ????

 

[Lonnie]

I have flow reduced to about 30ml/hr & readings are back to zero in my reactor.

I started a second reactor up today & hope to have it fully running in a week.

I plan to get them both running at a relatively slow rate & hopefully my tank levels will start to drop.

Added a small bag of carbon to the sump. With luck this will clear up the water in the tank.

 

[saltydog64]

Lonnie...........

I'm in the process of restarting my SR, as tank NO3 is on the rise, even thu I'm running a Refugium, change water 2X a month and so on....NO3 has slowing gone from zero to 9 ppm in the last couple of months. No telling how high NO3 would have been w/o the refurgium...

I mention this because I just refinished reading my notes from Feb '08 up to when I shut it down, and YES sugar did cause water cloudiness ( I was running in a 5 gal bucket). I confirmed this when I was expermenting with "stuff" to speed the process up (bad idea) as one MUST be slow to cycle an SR. and restarted it and then added sugar again (with no other changes) and cloudiness returned....does this prove what caused your cloudy water...of course, not but take it for it's worth.

What I would do is ensure you have good aeriation, even if you have to add an air stone.......carbon while not a bad idea "shouldn't clear up a bacteria bloom...only time will IMO.

Hey here's a thought do you have a diatom filter if so that "might" remove the cloudiness....

Good luck !!!!

Dick

 

[siskiou]

Reporting back in:
even after the bleach treatment, there was still some residual sulfur smell, but I thought it was okay enough to try again after letting the reactor air out for the rest of the day.

I used fresh sulfur, and it's now dripping at 1 drop per second into a bucket, with me replacing the amount dripped into the bucket in the evening, before my ATO kicks in.
I'm not comfortable returning the output to the tank until it's all cycled and this worked great last time.

The only thing is keeping an eye on the bucket, so it doesn't overflow.
That gets harder, the faster the drip is set!

 

[saltydog64]

<a href=showthread.php?s=&postid=14563072#post14563072 target=_blank>Originally posted</a> by siskiou
Reporting back in:
even after the bleach treatment, there was still some residual sulfur smell, but I thought it was okay enough to try again after letting the reactor air out for the rest of the day.

I used fresh sulfur, and it's now dripping at 1 drop per second into a bucket, with me replacing the amount dripped into the bucket in the evening, before my ATO kicks in.
I'm not comfortable returning the output to the tank until it's all cycled and this worked great last time.

The only thing is keeping an eye on the bucket, so it doesn't overflow.
That gets harder, the faster the drip is set!

sis..........

excellant and a very good idea on both the new sulfur and running out of separate bucket as I to did that and will again as I restart mine...

You still got a H2S smell ? after removing bleach what did you do...like about how much rinising,etc and did you treat for "clorine residue" from the bleach...just curious.. :rollface: :rollface:

 

[rpmof78]

First thanks djfrankies for this DIY...

After reading this wonderfull DIY thread over many times and fighting to get my Nitrates down from 30 ppm (Salifer)...I have
built and just installed mine, running at 1dps at this time...

Here is the front view of my reactor.

The back view.

Here it is installed with the doors open, yep it's pretty tight in there...There is just enought room to get a CO2 bottel in on the right side at a later date...

Last but not least my 210 with the doors closed just to show that they still will with the denitrator installed...

Here are my tank stats:

210 Gal
pH: 8.3
Alk: 7.8
Mag: 1480
Cal:460
Phos: 0
Nitrate: 30

 

[Steve 926]

rpmof78

Welcome to RC, Nice to have you here !

Nice job on the reactor. Good Luck with it!

Patience at first, will reward you latter with it.
Keep us posted of your results.

Steve

:smokin:

 

[tmz]

What is the small cyclinder with the blue caps attached to the argonite tube in the second photo, gfo?

 

[rpmof78]

What is the small cyclinder with the blue caps attached to the argonite tube in the second photo, gfo?

Tom


It is GFO and Carbon 50/50 mix to keep the GFO from clumping...It is actually from my RO/DI unit prior to ungrading it to a dual canaster DI...

 

[saltydog64]

rpmof78........

First welcome abroard.........and great looking reactor(s). Is it your intent to run the second unit as a CO2 driven, diy calcium reactor..????

Dick

 

[rpmof78]

First welcome abroard.........and great looking reactor(s). Is it your intent to run the second unit as a CO2 driven, diy calcium reactor..????

Dick

Once the Nitrate side has kick in, I'm looking at adding CO2 into the second reactor...I'm currently dosing Calcium, Alkalinity and Magnesium...I have a fairly high Calcium demand about 8 oz. a week...My intent is to lesson the use of the doser by taking advantage of the low pH out of the de-nitrator by adding a little CO2...I’m sure that I won’t be able to totally do away with the dosing unit but would like to dose a more natural IMHO Calcium... I actually look at anouther DIY for the Calcium side DJ88 setup upflow with a CO2 gas recircualtion loop...

Terry