DIY needlewheel impeller experiment

[BarraCudaTM]

[BarraCudaTM]

[BarraCudaTM]

[Bob]

Care to share how you do it.

[BarraCudaTM]

needlewheel impeller

[nicky30092002]

that's power man! ..

[BarraCudaTM]

normal impeller

[Bob]

Is that part of a bioball?

[Terryz_]

juz replace the propeller with the bio ball can liao... or still need to change other thing... btw.. wats the advantage..

[Achilles Tang]

Its a foam maker... used in skimmers by H&S Euroreef and Schuran. Not sure if its patented. but now being copied by the Taiwanese/Chinese like Macro.

[BarraCudaTM]

You just need to change the impeller with the modified bioball and place a air tube near the intake of the pump. The pump will suck in the air and water at the same time and produce alot of fine bubbles.

[bum]

u hooking it up to a skimmer?

lets see some skimmate!!

[Bob]

Thanks BarraCuda!

Will try it on my skimmer.

[BarraCudaTM]

u hooking it up to a skimmer?

lets see some skimmate!!

not yet .. until I get my hands on a weipro 2014

[Ah Teck]

Hi Barracuda?

I am proud of your reverse engineering if it works.

I will try on my old skimmer tomorrow.

rdgs,

Teck

[BarraCudaTM]

Actually using the original impeller will work also .. just that when it sucks in too much air, the impeller will "knock" and produce a clicking sound. The impeller will then cease to spin until all the air is discharged, a modified impeller wouldnt have such a probelm. You can even hook up a air pump for max efficiency if yr powerhead is too deep in the water.

[ervine]

Hm.... will pumping air into the powerhead affect the venturi intake in anyway?

[BarraCudaTM]

You dont even need the venturi intake anyway if you use this method. The more air pumped in, the flowrate will be lower. So you have to strike a balance between having enough pressure to maintain the water level in the skimmer and having max amount of bubbles.

A slower flowrate will result in less air intake via the venturi

[shiraz]

so can i say, u have to mod the weipro then only u can use the pump.. cause the water would have to travel up and down the ermmm what u call that... the pipe that goes up and arnd your tank wall..

so would it be better if the skimmer is placed in the sump and the pump directly linked to the intake of the skimmer by getting rid of the pipe?

[BarraCudaTM]

not a probelm at all, the loop pipe will enable a higher contact time.

[ervine]

Can't wait to see the outcome... what I am afriad of though is the DIY impeller might fail....

[shiraz]

but barra.... hmmm was wondering,... the loop... would it 'join' the fine bubbles together to form bigger bubbles? ermmm get what i mean? small bubbles will join to bigger ones and eventually burst right.. so would that be the case? or it is perfectly fine?

[BarraCudaTM]

I was told that the weipro venturi intake would actually be counter effective, I have to try out to know. If the bubbles collect and "join" at the loop then you dont have enough flowrate. You then need to reduce the air intake.

[SpaTanS]

Bravo Barra Bro ...

[purplefin]

I have tried this experiment on my macro ASF300 venturi. My pump is 2500l/hr.

With air and water going thru the loop, it is barely sufficient energy to pump the water right into the reaction chamber. By reducing the air intake, the microbubble is too insignicant to get any work done.

My thoughts is you either need a very strong pump to get the water + air into the loop, right into the chamber. Or, drill a hole near the foot of the reaction chamber and pump this air + water mixture right in (just like H&S, Euroreef).

By doing that, basically the venturi portion will not be used. One way is to stuff more air tubes into the venturi loop and have air stones at the end of the tube (inside the chamber( to create more microbubbles.