Aquarium CO2 Reactor Mixer

thingiverse

This is an additional CO2 reactor (mixer) that helps to better dissolve the remaining CO2 bubbles in the aquarium inflow water after an inline injector, e.g., "JBL Pro Flora Direct 16/22". The reactor is designed to be used with an external filter. The mixer works as follows. The water is supplied through an inflow pipe at the top of an outer casing and travels through a labyrinth consisting of 7 pairs of corrugated plates with three openings (flow channels) in each. The plates are arranged so that the channels are shifted by 60° between even and odd plates. The turbulent water flow, while travelling through the plates, forces larger CO2 bubbles to break or get caught in the cavities of the plates. The outer diameter of the mixer inflow connector pipe in the stl file is 12.66mm which on my printer with ASA filament resulted in 12.76mm actual outer diameter. I designed the connector pipe to be inserted in an inflow water socket with 13.4mm internal diameter supplied with the "Oase Filtosmart 100" filter. The 6 pairs of plates are identical, the 7th pair has a different lower plate (co2_mixer_base_plate.stl) with an extra spacer for leaning on the inflow pipe. The outlet grill slats are tilted to direct the water flow downwards at 65°. The top and bottom parts of the inflow pipe should be glued. In my case, since I used ASA filament, I simply glued the pipe halves with acetone. The mixer is assembled by skewing the plates on the inflow pipe, sliding in the outlet grill, and putting the outer casing on top of all that. The grooves on the plates and two rails within the outer casing keep the plates in place and properly aligned. The even and odd plates should be rotated by 180° relative to each other.