Recommended water pump?

[87corey]

What water pump for 60w co2 should i purchase please?

[Techgraphix]

If you consider a decent cooler (like a CW5200) you don't need an extra waterpump.
Filling a tank with water (or coolingliquid) isn't the best way to cool your tube... been there, done that.... did only cost me a few months to finish the life of my first tube..
But any pump with a capacity of more than 10L/min will be usefull (http://www.lightobject.com/Search.aspx? ... C&c=43&p=1)
Kees

[SWMS]

You might be able to do a combination like I am doing.

Get your self a 5 gallon drum and fill it with distilled or tap water make holes in the lid for pipes.
Wrap it in some kind of insulating material, eg mineral wool or a jacket for a beer keg ( this will help stabilise the temperature. Put some algacide in 20 litres of water and use 5 litres of propylene glycol.
If you use it indoors don't worry about the glycol it's just antifreeze. Don't buy de-ionised water it will leech the minerals from the metal in the chiller.

Oh yeah. Also buy a thermal probe for water for your drum so you can read the temperature.


From memory the pump should be at about 4-6 litres per min. Get yourself a second hand aquarium chiller and buy yourself some pipe reducers. In the USA you should be able to get a chiller easily.

The advantage of an aquarium chiller is that some of them come with heaters and a lot more easy to get hold of cheaper second hand.
So if you are in a garden shed and it's cold in the winter you can bring the temperature up to 15 degrees and avoid thermal shock.

Now you have a nice big buffer of water and you have a much cheaper chiller. True it's not as small a system as a Chinese chiller but it should work well. They are basically the same thing but the Chinese chiller unit is more powerful as its a closed loop system with only 5-6 litres of water. So it has to super chill that slow flowing water on every pass. Get the best chiller you can. Second hand it will still be a lot cheaper than a closed loop system. Even if the chiller can't keep up it will still delay the heat rise enough for all day use.

These aquarium chillers are designed to be very efficient too, I am guessing they are more efficient than the laser chillers.

My pump is 213 gallons an hour =970 litres per hour so 16 litres per minute. So that would seem way too fast and you'd be worried that the pressure on the pipe is too much? Don't worry too much. It's not a closed loop system so there isn't much pressure there. Increased flow doesn't increase pressure per se. More flow X the BTU per hour of the chiller does mean that it removes more BTU from the water.

If I put a fast pump in a closed loop system that would definitely increase the pressure.
Chillers seem to be rated in BTU. That's where the efficiency comes from. You could have a 600w chiller that can only remove 1000 BTU or a 300w that can remove 1500 BTU. It's partly why I went for an aquarium chiller.

How much heat your tube gives off is for you to find out. . If you can find out how much in BTU Or kelvin you can match that to your chiller. I think from memory 1 watt will raise 1 lite of water by 1 degree c in 1 hour. Don't quote me on that though.

One final word... Make sure that pump is fully submerged and try to eliminate all the air bubbles. If they gather at the exit point in the tube and make one big bubble the tube will overheat and crack. It happened to me!

[87corey]

Thanks for the help, i went with a 650L/h pump and for a chiller i am modifying a second hand dehumidifier i purchased for $20

[SWMS]

Yeah I've seen guides on this. Looks like a lot of work and a bit ugly. If it works tho!