Better Hydroclone

thingiverse

This is my fifth or sixth hydroclone design, and it's definitely the best working model I've created yet. The hydroclone is specifically designed to separate solids from water in a pond, and it does an excellent job of removing debris from the water. It can also handle algae, but it works most effectively when separating debris. To start with, the off-centre 19mm inlet feeds into the hydroclone, where the discharge is located at the bottom. A 2L Coca-Cola bottle can be attached to capture solids, and a 19mm outlet allows clean water to exit through the top. The basic operation of the hydroclone is similar to that of a bagless vacuum cleaner. Water enters the inlet, spirals around the first chamber in a vortex, and gets accelerated past an accelerator before making a sharp turn at the bottom. Solids fall down into the attached bottle while clean water exits through the top. All attachments are designed for 19mm piping, which makes it easy to connect standard 1.25, 1.5 or 2L Coca-Cola bottles to the thread on the bottom. This design has been thoroughly tested and works incredibly well, with minimal loss of flow and effective separation of algae from the water. This hydroclone is perfect for small koi ponds that have debris in the water due to fish stirring up silt on the bottom. Putting multiple hydroclones in parallel can improve performance, but it's not entirely clear why this is the case. A recent update has been made to include a more aggressive accelerator, parabolic nozzle, and smaller outlet, which significantly improves performance by removing more than twice the amount of solids and even smaller particles than the previous design. A second design labeled "NOT FOR ALGAE" has also been added for water that only needs solid separation. To print this hydroclone successfully, use a Sunhokey Prusa i3 printer with 0.3mm or less resolution, 20% infill or no infill at all if your printer is good at bridging gaps. Walls should be made 1.2mm thick as a minimum when using PLA, and thicker walls may be required for ABS due to its lower rigidity.