New project for the year - recirculating becketts

[Achilles Tang]

After AlfaRomeo's comments on recirculating becketts, I am now seriously thinking about combining the power of the beckett injector with the sound theory of longer dwell times using recirculation.

I already have a large diameter body and very tall height (I'm talking about my skimmer, and not me!), which means that I am getting good skimming. Now if I could just modify my beckett skimmer for recirculation, I could potentially make it the most efficient + powerful skimmer in the whole world!! I could ask for a ransom of ONE MILLION DOLLARS!!! *finger in corner of mouth*

Imagine dual becketts on a MX-70 on a closed loop, pulling out every molecule of DOC in the water that's recirculated inside my skimmer on a dwell time of two minutes!!

Or I could make use of reduced head pressure and use a MD55 instead to save electricity?

What do some of the gurus here think about this idea?

I'm still researching the best ways to modify my skimmer..... so any input would be appreciated!

AT

[RAV-65]

Wah... very hard to phantom ur thoughts... can draw a pic?!

[ZeRoC00l]

I think this has been done somewhere in Reefcentral.

Something like the below

1010Super_Skimmer_PVC.jpe

[roidan]

this concept is nothing new already....just that not many beckett users and makers got down to implementing it...

http://www.reefcentral.com/forums/showthre...ulating+beckett

the concept got mentioned in March 2002 before.....yeah...more than 2 years ago...

just like not all conventional single pass beckett skimmers are designed the same or perform the same....the recirculating feature definitely needs more thought otherwise it will perform worse than a single pass beckett....

good luck guys

[aquabeAnz]

IMO, i think recirculation may maximize the effectiveness of the skimmer trapping more DOC as the output...

but it would be diff to realli calculate the percentages involved, and whether it would be cost worthy to carry out something of this kind...

I would rather seek to optimize the input from the main tank..

Hope not

Here's wishing all a merry Xmas to prevent kena flame..

[Achilles Tang]

Zerocool.. that's just a pix of a quad beckett.

A recirculating beckett is like a H&S/Euroreef needlewheel skimmer where there is a water feed into the skimmer body and the pumps are on a closed loop.

I'm just looking into further increasing dwell times (not that my current diameter/height advantages isn't enough, it is!)

So I am looking into modifying my current skimmer such that my beckett housings are on a closed loop with the bottom box and I feed water at a slower rate seperately.

Something like this?

[roidan]

Something like this?

That's Nanook's skimmer

anyway, should be very easy to add recirculation to current beckett skimmers...

just drill an extra hole in the box for the suction part of the pump and drill another hole in the main body chamber for the feed...viola....you have it..

[Achilles Tang]

Yup... that's Nanook's!

I'm toying with the idea of modding my skimmer... its entirely possible to blend the strengths of beckett with the strengths of the H&S/Deltec skimmer's design on recirculation.

Actually, for my skimmer, dwell time is not an issue, I got the height and the diameter. For smaller beckett skimmers, perhaps recirculation is a very good way to get even better skimming results?

So why do I still want it?

A question of quick skimming or slow skimming... how thorough a cleaning per pass would I want? I must be bored to think about such issues.

If a beckett skimmer can be designed to be recirculating and is tested against a recirculating Deltec... which would win?

[aquabeAnz]

i would go for a Quadru-Beckett...

a sure winner~!~!

and definitely a bulletproof for ANthias maniacs~!~!

[blueheaven]

I was also thinking about this for some time already.

How about connecting a recirculating pump to the box (of course pump must be of lower flowrate than main feed pump) and adding a dedicated injector for the recirculated water. But for this to happen, you need a skimmer with big diameter body and must be tall and you will need pumps with big electricity usage

[AlfaRomeo]

Main advantage of recirculating skimmers is that you can adjust the feed to your liking to get a balance between dwell time and tank turnover rate. All this, while maintaining the same bombardment rate from the foam generators (Needlewheel or beckett)

From what I understand from RC, dwell time should be as close to 2 mins as possible and also tank turnover rate of at least 2 x a day. Obviously, to get both, you need a skimmer body with a big volume for processing at any given rate/time.

Current understanding of how a skimmer works point to a wider skimmer body being more beneficial then going higher in ht. i.e generally, 12 inch body with 24 inch ht is better than 6 inch body with 48 inch ht.

Dwell time can be further enhance by the swirling effect of the feed water and bubbles. The contact rate will have been extended due to the longer path of the bubbles being swirled instead of going straight up.

All the above concepts are from RC and other boards. I am obviously not smart enuff to come up with these kinda things on my own.

[Achilles Tang]

Maybe I can even tweak my skimmer plumbings to go for slow turnover but extra thorough skimming using recirculation with MD55 with lower costs!

And with a turn of a few valves, then swop over to MX-70 and have normal beckett operations for emergency fast turnover skimming?