MitchReef Posted May 14, 2009 Share Posted May 14, 2009 I decided to build a nice media reactor and will be doing a DIY Demo / Presentation at our next Club Meeting. I pre-built one unit and got a second one all cut out and mocked up for the demo build. The complete unit will be included in the meeting Raffle, so somebody will get a really nice reactor for a BUCK!!!!! The reactor is already built, so I will just show the points of interest and a couple of shots of the complete and assembled unit. I am not going to go into use of acrylic solvent adhesives, or basic acrylic bonding here. If y'all want a DIY on basic acrylic techniques, let me know and I will do one.... Here ya go.... This next step is involved, but hang in there and it will all make sense....promise.... The top of the reactor is 1/4" acrylic. I cut a smaller disk of 1/4" acrylic and put the two together (offset) with a little bit of crazy glue gel, so it was temporary, I then drilled the center and edge with the correct holes for the inlet and outlet pipes and separated the two pieces of acrylic and cleaned up the crazy glue....I then applied PVC glue to the pipe....after 5 minutes of the pipes softening under the glue I pressed them through the small acrlic disk and put water thin acrylic glue into the joint, working the joint a little bit....after it set up a little bit I routed the tubes through the larger piece and repeated the two part gluing at the point where the two acrylic disks sandwiched together...I then applied thin acrylic glue all in between the two disks, displacing the air....Pressed them together until they bonded....I then glued the entire lid to the top with water thin glue....I used the spacer I will describe next, to hold the inlet pipe in line....I ended up with this.... I used the two glues together to effectively dissolve the pipe and the acrylic, worked them together and then allowed them to resolidify together...after everything set up I put a bead of thick Weldon around all the pipe to acrylic joints and to the small disk to large disk meeting surface.... When I bonded the flange to the bottom of the tube, I pressed the tube about 1/16" past flush and injected the Weldon into the meeting area.... I will explain in a few minutes.... This is the bottom disk, which comes off to load media.... The outlet pipe ends right at the level of the inside of the top large disk, The inlet pipe actually ends 1/4 inch up from the bottom of the main body tube and is stabilized by this spacer which has flow holes and little feet to keep it off the bottom, so the water will be forced to flow up and through it.... I made two black foam donuts to keep the media where it belongs... Now for the assembly.... Hold the reactor upside-down and insert a foam disk all the way to the top of the reactor...I used a spare piece of pipe to get it all the way in...then add your media....Place the lower foam disk into the bottom, just barely pushing it in.... Put the bottom spacer onto the inlet pipe and push it barely into the body tube.... I bought a 1/8 inch thick O-Ring just the right size.... The reason for the little lip of the body tube protruding through the flange is to hold the O-Ring in place and stabilize its compression.... Apply the bottom disk and stabilize it while starting three of the screws.... Run those down to where they just touch to hold everything steady and put the others in...tighten them all just to touching.... Then tighten them all up, using a star pattern, to compress the O-Ring well....If you look really carefully you can see the area of compression.... Then all that is left to do is flip it over and hook it up using whatever pump you want to use....pump some RO/DI water through it to rinse the media (if required) and run the reactor!!!! Link to comment
zemuss Posted May 14, 2009 Share Posted May 14, 2009 Where do you get the clear cylinder tubing? I need some and home depot doesn't have it. thanks. Link to comment
Needreefunds Posted May 14, 2009 Share Posted May 14, 2009 Hey, you did build your own! Nice job Mitch! Looks like you had fun with that. Nice size too, better than the DI cartridge we discussed months back. Good stuff Link to comment
MitchReef Posted May 14, 2009 Author Share Posted May 14, 2009 It is extruded acrylic and I got it from one of our club sponsors, an acrylic assembler...it was amazingly inexpensive too...I gave $5 for each 1 foot piece!!!! I probably don't have $20 in the whole thing!!! And it's a foot of chamber at 3 1/4" ID...that's a lot of media space!!!! NRF, thanks a bunch, this was great to put together....just the kind of stuff I love to do... Link to comment
cptbjorn Posted May 14, 2009 Share Posted May 14, 2009 Tap Plastics and Mcmaster-Carr both have acrylic pipe, looks like any size up to 3" OD is fairly inexpensive (<5$/ft) at tapplastics.com. Mcmaster-Carr, true to form, has an excellent selection of pretty much any size and wall thickness you could want but for $$$. Link to comment
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