Was walking through the supermarket and noticed copper sulphate tablets. They are intended for "root control" of trees that have broken housing pipes.

The tablets are solid, when when mixed with water break down into a copper sulphate solution.

I guess the question is this:

Negative impacts (other than toxicity)?
Would it control nasties?
Thermal impact - I've seen some that that hypethesises that a copper sulphate solution may actually be better than straight water?

Tygon does not absorb impurities as fast as non-medical grade tubing does. Tygon WILL turn, but at a much slower rate.

I know that in the past there has been discussion of trying to kill off the beasties with aquarium type UV sanitizer lights. Seems to me like there are several problems with these.

1. BIG - The things are big enough that it would be a serious hassle to get them inside the case for many setups.

2. OVERKILL - Even the smallest units seem to be rated at far higher flow rates than what we use in the typical WC system

3. EXPEN$IVE - At $80-100 U$D they seem rather dear in terms of the cost for the amount of performance help they provide - you can buy an awful lot of *sol for that kind of money.

4. Hookup hassles (need mains current) and heat input to cooling system.

As an alternative, has any one investigated using UV LED's? I'm not sure if they make them in the right wavelength, but Electronics Goldmine's latest paper sale flyer had a 'UV LED' listed that they caution against allowing skin / eye exposure when powered up.

If there are such LED's available, it would seem like they would be a much better alternative.

1. Easy to fit - I was thinking a short length of Cu or PVC pipe, drill holes in the side of it, stick the LED's in and seal with silicone or equivalent. This would reqire negligible space, be easy to hook up since all one would need would be an appropriate resistor and a connection to 5 or 12 VDC off the PSU. An LED only draws milliwatts, so there would also be no real problem with adding heat to the system.

2. Obviously an LED isn't going to have the killing power that a light bulb would have, but one could scale things with multiple LED's and get a kill potential appropriate to our actual flow rates.

3. LED's are pretty cheap, even in low number quantity, on the order of a dollar or so max. Likewise the resistors and the rest of the stuff that would be needed to do a hookup....

Has anyone tried this, or have a reason that it wouldn't work?

Gooserider

three problems -
1) UV sanitation is based on UV intensity, which roughly correlates to power. With the low power draw of LED's, what kind of intensity can we get? refer to other thread for more info and a spreadsheet that calculates kill off (roughly, based on many assumptions).
2) all uv leds i have seen are not the right kind of UV
3) some tubing blocks UV (not insurmountable)


Previous Thread

And no this is not the answer
 

I will admit I know nothing about this other than what I have read here.

The worst you can do is yell at me but maybe I'll learn some more stuff NOT to try in my system.

After opening up my machine to reorganize things, found big white blob in my res - (damn don't have a yuk smiley) :eek:. So came here and read this and found you guys don't have any miracles either. Found a general reference of things that destoy bacteria, thought I would pass it along and see if it shakes anything loose other than grumbles.killing stuff...

I haven't heard anyone mention the enzyme cleaners for drain buildup, would that be strong enough? Or something along that line?

I am new enough to this that I haven't had to deal w/ gunk in the rad yet. (hmm opens another window an googles rad cleaner - seems to all be high alkalie, how does that affect our stuff (plastics, and metals(yeah I know it sounds stupid but learned long time ago to ask stupid b4 assuming and doing stupid)).

Thanks for whatever comes from this - Let the haranguing begin.

I'm going to be conducting an experiment not on my w/c system but on my turtle tank , I know it's a far cry but algae growth in there is insane!! I am getting a broken Tap water sanitizer from my father , If this works out well I'll be able to get these cheap and if anyone is interested , i'll relay them to you at whatever they cost me , but anyway.. The unit uses water pressure from your line and fills up with water , I am going to be making a custom input and output on it and running it in a seperate loop from my filter.. It has a res that fills up with water and creates a turbine motion of water , the water in the turbine goes completely around the UV tube from bottom to top , I'm eliminating the filter at the top as I have a filter to do this for me and In a W/C setup , it'd be completely unneccisary , I don't suggest using LEDs , as they put out very minimal actual UV rays , --Josh

All I know mine is that mine is about 2 1/2 years old and I still have crystal clear water in my turtle tank, granted my uv filter is overkill for the size of my tank so it may not be as powerful as when new but it is still effective.

Why do you think it's a cyanobacteria?

I haven't read through the whole thread but why hasn't alcohol been working?

Well, if your system stays closed... there is most likely no algue left to grow ;-)

No, you are right, the UW is for a 500 galon pond... I don't think you have that much water in your system. Even if it is performing like a 05w w UV, it still will be enough to kill algue in a one galon system.

<edit> for got this question:
Your water stays clear, but is yor tubing also?
I'm still not sure that the white stuff on the walls of my tubing is algue..

I may have just answered my own question on the use of LED's for killing stuff... It doesn't appear to be feasible.

I just looked up the other thread where the UV stuff is discussed, and found that the desired wavelength for the killer rays is "UV-C",with a wavelength of ~250 - 300 nm.

I got started on this idea by a LED being offered in the latest Electronic Goldmine flyer which had all sorts of warnings about 'produces intense UV light, protect eyes and skin when using' and thought it was a useful looking item. Reviewing the specs for it however, I found that it only puts out in the 400-405nm range.

Since I was on the idea however, I went to the Globalspec website, which supposedly allows one to search by specs on multiple manufacturers catalogs. If I specified "UV LED", I got only units running in the 400+nm range, if I specified 250-300nm peak wavelength, I got only 'possible matches' that didn't spec a peak wavelength, but were only visible light LED's from other descriptions (Most annoying - :mad: I hate bogus matches...)

Thus it appears that my idea would not work due to the simple fact that nobody appears to make LED's the right wavelength.

The other objection mentioned was the question of light intensity put out by these LED's. I agree they wouldn't be as intense as a bulb, but given the incredible level of overkill even a 4W bulb seemed to give in a WC environment, I suspect that had the right LED's existed they would have been OK if I used several of them.

Gooserider

so, basically, as i said.

Copper sulphate is quite easy to find and is a really good biocide, but it reacts with brass and steel, so you need a pump with a ceramic shaft as the Askoll Aquapump 2 or 3 (I think they are out of production now, but you can ask for a marine aquarium's pump).

What about some kind of antibiotic like Erythromycin?

You can use good old fashioned hydrogen peroxide. It's probably not as good an anti bacterial agent a the stuff you can get from a pet store that clean fish tanks though.

What about Boric Acid? It's been use for hundreds of years as an anticeptic. It also does a great job of killing roaches. It comes in a powder that you get from a drug store. You mix it with water and presto: dead algea. It's also been used for mouthwash, eye drops, skin lotion, and cosmetics.

do you mean with brass+steel, or with brass and also with steel?

i quite fancied using this (and even bought some...) but don't want to use it with my silverprop fusion if it'll corrode (let alone the number of cores that are part brass these days...)

can you elaborate?

I mean it will surely corrode most types of steel and I'm 90% sure it will corrode brass too. Unfortunately for you it doesn't have to be brass and steel to get corrosion, but brass or steel

If you don't have a pump with a ceramic shaft you should forget about copper sulphate.

Ah BTW, if you have copper and brass in the same loop brass will corrode because of galvanic corrosion. It won't be as destructive as copper and aluminum but in the long run you will se the effects. Do a search in these forums I remember some pics of corroded brass parts.

funbun I've tried to clean copper oxidation with hydrogen peroxide with bad result: the green copper oxide turned into an almost black stain that could be removed only with sand paper!

As per boric acid I wouldn't use it either. I may be wrong but I think it will have some kind of bad reaction with copper.

Would you happen to know if the Danner mag series of pumps uses a ceramic shaft.

If so, since Ill only be using copper and the pump is ceramic, copper sulfate might work well :shrug:

well my iwakis have ceramic shafts i believe so they'd be OK ....

hmm - i guess the fusion would always be a problem then (copper base and brass top... :( )

There has been much discussion of chemical biocides on this and other boards, including sulfates, boric acid, hydrogen peroxide, and others. ALL have nasty properties that make them undesireable in a loop, including human toxicity, nasty reactions with the metals in the loop or low effectiveness. (I forget the details, but I'm sure a search would find most of them.

If sanitizing a loop were an easy thing, we'd all be using these chemicals, and this sort of endless discussion wouldn't be happening :D

As far as the difference between Cu and Brass is concerned, there is relatively little problem. AFAIK, ALL modern cores (and most older ones) use a mix of Cu and Brass (plus solder) because of the difficulty of making radiator tanks out of pure copper. The alloys involved however are such that corrosion is not a problem between them, and anything that will attack one will also attack the other - bear in mind that brass is mostly copper.

Gooserider

Maybe UV can keep the critters away
 

I have been fortunate in the extreme that I do not have this build-up problem that haunts so many. I use water that was not even bought, but generated through electrolysis at the UC-SD, its a long story how I wound up with it, but I have treated my two gallon supply as if it was as expensive as deuterated water. What is not used now, (about 1/2 a gallon) sits in a sealed Pyrex container as a piece of ice in my freezer for storage. Maybe that has helped.

But unregistered's post about 168 proc server setups got me thinking about UV as fire-up and forget solution. UV kills the micro critters, and is used in the food industry a lot to sanitize things. If a UV exposure contraption could be introduced in the loop, it would kill virtually all the micro-organisms that create these problems as the water flowed through it. UV doesn't travel very far through water though, so in the UV sanitizer it would have to be misted, or something like that so the UV could get at it. Wouldn't be practical obviously in a DIY home rig, but would probably be just a parisitic cost in a 168 proc cooler system (thats no longer a "rig"...thats a "system!"). Just an idea.

The difference in electrical potential between copper and brass is not high enough to show corrosion within the lifetime of most components is use in a water cooling system. In particular if you're running antifreeze or some other corrosion inhibitor I doubt you'll ever see any issues.

Well UV lamps for aquariums are really expensive, you need to change the quartz tube and the light bulb (or tube) every year or two and they do add heat, so I wouldn't take them as a solution.

Do you have a name or manufacturer for the sanitizer solution? I bought some of that Algae Destroyer at Walmart because it was fast and cheap. But I'd like to know more about the hot-tub sanitizer. All I can find is the Bromine type stuff. Thanks!

I put Pinesol in my system witha danner 3 and within 48 hours the inlet on my pump broke. Not sure if it is the pinsol's fault but it seems to be an odd conicidence.

I can't fathom how Pinesol would do that.

Don't know if this will help you clean out your system or not, but at AVT they just use distilled water and methanol in there industrial systems.

I recently had to service units in the middle east running 3+ years and seen no bio type build up what so ever.

Methanol is a good biocide if used in sufficient quantities... unfortunately humans are one of the biological organisms it kills. :p

As per removing garbage form the system, I have found nothing other than good ole' scrubbing that will get rid of it.

I tired
409
cascade
bleach
tide
comet (nasty stuff)


and none of them worked.. the only other one to go with its EZ off.. but EZ off wil eat right through acrylic and a good portion of materials that exist in the world including plastic and annodization.

I don't understand what you are suggesting Butcher as I have never heard of methonal being a problem to work with.

I mean the chemical is everywhere if there is an exposure issue it should be known.

You can buy gallons of it at any local hardware store, it is used as a camp cooking fuel, RV anti freeze, windshield washer fluid and so on.

It is also a fuel for your car, even more so if you have a drag racer :D

breate the fuems when a top fueler is in the pits and you will know what butcher is talking a bout.......