Bootlegger
New member
Hi,
From running a calcium reactor, my pH is hanging around 8.0 during the day and I'm sure below that at night. I don't like to shut my reactor off at night because that just means I'm running the reactor twice as hard during the day and potentially creating the very alk swings we try to avoid. If I had to chose between alk swings and low pH, experience says take the latter.
Before you say, "add a second chamber to your reactor", I'll have to state that I haven't had good experience with this and find it fairly ineffective. The pH of the effluent isn't low enough to dissolve enough media to be an effective buffer.
Thus, I'm leaning toward a the well-known buffering ability of Kalkwasser.
Unfortunately, I don't have room under my stand for a full-blown Kalk dosing setup so I was thinking I could use a DIY Kalk chamber as a buffering chamber for my effluent. The idea would be to push the effluent through a chamber loaded with kalk paste settled on a conical bottom. Keeping supersaturated Kalk from dumping into my tank could be done with a dip tube (coming in from the top) and and filter sponge. I would even bet the pad wouldn't be necessary as my effluent rate is so slow that an up-flow design would prevent any sludge or chalk (concentrated Kalk)from traveling up the vertical tube and out. The sponge is purely for Murphy's Law, i.e. like knocking over the chamber. The only liquid that would get out is limewater.
I think the big issue with this idea in practice is chemistry, not design. I'm not the famous Randy so I don't know how to surmise what low pH saltwater will do when it contacts kalkwasser. My guess is that its no different than what happens in a traditional kalkwasser reactor. I know I'm going to get some precipitation and settling but this would only be a maintenance issue, e.g. dumping out old junk and putting in new kalk.
What do you think?
From running a calcium reactor, my pH is hanging around 8.0 during the day and I'm sure below that at night. I don't like to shut my reactor off at night because that just means I'm running the reactor twice as hard during the day and potentially creating the very alk swings we try to avoid. If I had to chose between alk swings and low pH, experience says take the latter.
Before you say, "add a second chamber to your reactor", I'll have to state that I haven't had good experience with this and find it fairly ineffective. The pH of the effluent isn't low enough to dissolve enough media to be an effective buffer.
Thus, I'm leaning toward a the well-known buffering ability of Kalkwasser.
Unfortunately, I don't have room under my stand for a full-blown Kalk dosing setup so I was thinking I could use a DIY Kalk chamber as a buffering chamber for my effluent. The idea would be to push the effluent through a chamber loaded with kalk paste settled on a conical bottom. Keeping supersaturated Kalk from dumping into my tank could be done with a dip tube (coming in from the top) and and filter sponge. I would even bet the pad wouldn't be necessary as my effluent rate is so slow that an up-flow design would prevent any sludge or chalk (concentrated Kalk)from traveling up the vertical tube and out. The sponge is purely for Murphy's Law, i.e. like knocking over the chamber. The only liquid that would get out is limewater.
I think the big issue with this idea in practice is chemistry, not design. I'm not the famous Randy so I don't know how to surmise what low pH saltwater will do when it contacts kalkwasser. My guess is that its no different than what happens in a traditional kalkwasser reactor. I know I'm going to get some precipitation and settling but this would only be a maintenance issue, e.g. dumping out old junk and putting in new kalk.
What do you think?
