Thermodynamics and evaporation rates.
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hahnmeister
In Memoriam
Bean, Randy, and the bunch are right... the precision needed to be accurate just isnt there... too many variables. Convection is complicated enough, but the radiation, evaopration, etc... its just insane to try to figure it out... not to mention, things change over time (even in a single day) that will make any calculation worthless.
:rollface:
First, i have to agree with pretty much every thing else that has been stated thus far: It's simply not practical.
However, your question reminded me of an idea i had a little while ago.
At the time, I had just read some reef chemistry article (which if i remember correctly was written by Randy). Specifically the article
was about ambient oxygen level in the tank and how different factors affect it. What made the article interesting (well.... it was interesting on it's own but, it made it pertinent to this thread..) is that within it a study was quoted. In that study a nebulizer was used to boost the oxygen content of water (although i don't believe nebulizer was the exact word used to describe it.).
Now, i have access to nebulizers (I have CF and asthma). I thought it wouldn't be all that difficult to modify one so as to increase the oxygen level of my tank. Luckily i thought out the pros and cons of the situation: the fog that covered the top of the tank would prevent adquate light penitration and, given gaseous state of the mixture as well as the variable amount of evaporation, it would almost certainly lead to a change in salinity.
As a result i decided that it probably wouldn't be fruitful, but if you are interested in slowly changing your salinity back and forth over time, it'd probably be worth looking into.
ah... real quick, for those of you who have never heard of what i'm talking about:
Nebulizer
The mechanism to alter salinity with a nebulizer would be fairly easy. The nebulizer would have to be able to alternate between running off of the tank water, and running off of a RO/DI (or distilled reserve) input. Running off of the tank water would slowly (painfully so) increase the salinity of the water. Running the nebulizer off of the freshwater reserve would decrease salinity (once again... very slowly).
Random and crazy thought, i know.... i still think i might try some thing like this to "stabilize" the tank at night, since it would help combat some of the pH increase associated with night time respiration. Course it's a bit of a beast to setup and since the night time pH shift isn't really a problem for me, i've avoided.
Anyway...
First, i have to agree with pretty much every thing else that has been stated thus far: It's simply not practical.
However, your question reminded me of an idea i had a little while ago.
At the time, I had just read some reef chemistry article (which if i remember correctly was written by Randy). Specifically the article
was about ambient oxygen level in the tank and how different factors affect it. What made the article interesting (well.... it was interesting on it's own but, it made it pertinent to this thread..) is that within it a study was quoted. In that study a nebulizer was used to boost the oxygen content of water (although i don't believe nebulizer was the exact word used to describe it.).
Now, i have access to nebulizers (I have CF and asthma). I thought it wouldn't be all that difficult to modify one so as to increase the oxygen level of my tank. Luckily i thought out the pros and cons of the situation: the fog that covered the top of the tank would prevent adquate light penitration and, given gaseous state of the mixture as well as the variable amount of evaporation, it would almost certainly lead to a change in salinity.
As a result i decided that it probably wouldn't be fruitful, but if you are interested in slowly changing your salinity back and forth over time, it'd probably be worth looking into.
ah... real quick, for those of you who have never heard of what i'm talking about:
Nebulizer
The mechanism to alter salinity with a nebulizer would be fairly easy. The nebulizer would have to be able to alternate between running off of the tank water, and running off of a RO/DI (or distilled reserve) input. Running off of the tank water would slowly (painfully so) increase the salinity of the water. Running the nebulizer off of the freshwater reserve would decrease salinity (once again... very slowly).
Random and crazy thought, i know.... i still think i might try some thing like this to "stabilize" the tank at night, since it would help combat some of the pH increase associated with night time respiration. Course it's a bit of a beast to setup and since the night time pH shift isn't really a problem for me, i've avoided.
Anyway...
actually, this would have to be solved with the use of both heat transfer and mass transfer, both very difficult subjects
as stated by other posts, it would not be worth your time to do so, you could factor in so many different things that unless you had the equipment to measure the parameters required to solve the problem it wouldn't even work because without the use of equipment that can detect the different variables to a very high degree its not statistically accurate; in other words, you would need all of your measurement equipment to be accurate with at least 3 significant figures so that by the time you use the measured variables you have at least 1 significant figure left. The best you could get it down to is one digit, something like 4 mL/day. thats probably about the most accurate you could achieve
i'm a chemical engineer so i do these types of calculations for a living
as stated by other posts, it would not be worth your time to do so, you could factor in so many different things that unless you had the equipment to measure the parameters required to solve the problem it wouldn't even work because without the use of equipment that can detect the different variables to a very high degree its not statistically accurate; in other words, you would need all of your measurement equipment to be accurate with at least 3 significant figures so that by the time you use the measured variables you have at least 1 significant figure left. The best you could get it down to is one digit, something like 4 mL/day. thats probably about the most accurate you could achieve
i'm a chemical engineer so i do these types of calculations for a living
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