indrhrvest
New Member
Just thought I would share some R&D I'm doing on a commercial Aero system I'm designing..
http://youtu.be/mREl9DzmsYE
http://youtu.be/mREl9DzmsYE
Tefen Nozzles @ 100 PSI for Aeroponics
- Thread starter indrhrvest
- Start date
indrhrvest
New Member
Still fabricating the entire system right now. I'm going to test a variety of nozzles.
well look forward to seeing it all in action
indrhrvest
New Member
indrhrvest
New Member
It's not a rez, it's actually a 450 gallon Aquaculture fish tank I cut in half. We also plan to use these for large root plants.
I had the tooling done to make 48"X96"x24" (aquaculture tank) and 48"X96"X12" (Aero root chamber) HDPE molds. They are the same outside deminsions, one is only deeper. I don't have my 12" molds done yet so I cut one of the 24" in half so I could get started fabricating the system.
The system is stackable, so you can have 1,2 or even 3 stacked, depending on what you are growing. For example you could stack three of them if you were growing microgreens. If you are growing a larger herb, you'd probably only want one unit.
I'm waiting on the tops to get finished which they should be any day now. The nozzle manifold is designed to be quickly swaped out. The lids will come, some with 2" or 3" holes, various spacing and a lid that you can use a grow mat to grow mirogreens. When you swap lids, I'll also have different manifolds you can drop in for each lid. The system was designed to be vary modular, flexible and scalable. You can use whatever lights you want. I'm going to just use trusty T5's for my R&D on the system itself.
The system I'm building here is being setup for Basil, so I'll have a lid with 102 holes for a 2" net pot on 6" centers. The stacked system will have a total of 204 holes (stacked) and should push about .5-1 lbs of basil per square foot a month. How many holes you want depends on how big a plant you are growing. I have the 24" deep trays for guys growing some serious root systems.
The system is being developed for large scale commercial Aeroponics. I'm also developing skid built R/O water processing and storage systems as well as a nutrient distribution piping system. These units can be on casters, or mounted solid. They simply "plug into" a nutrient manifold system, set the ppm, recycle timer and that's it. It's a drain to waste system.
We have a Facebook page /indoorharvest
Here's what the rack looks like without all the plumbing. Also no top lights hung yet.
cc08150
Well-Known Member
WOW....yes I can definitely see how it will be flexible for many different types of setups. I could imagine 3-4 nice BIG bushes in that blue tank with some huge root systems....or dozens of small ones in a SOG style just depending on your lighting and grow preference. Good stuff man, good stuff.
indrhrvest
New Member
Here's a video showing the pump cycles. The pump runs basically two cycles in a 6 second period. It takes about 4 seconds to get full pressure across all of the nozzles.
I'm thinking the optimal mist time is going to be between 4-6 seconds to get a good broad coverage. I'll learn more during testing.
The plan is to find a sweet spot between low pressure Aero and the more finicky high pressure Aero. With low pressure, the amount of water used requires the use of a recirculating system. Our goal is to design a simple to use system that will be drain to waste.
By creating a wet mist, we get the dependable results of low pressure, but our water consumption is low enough to make drain to waste acceptable. By going drain to waste, it simplifies everything for the grower and provides consistent healthy yields.
I'm thinking the optimal mist time is going to be between 4-6 seconds to get a good broad coverage. I'll learn more during testing.
The plan is to find a sweet spot between low pressure Aero and the more finicky high pressure Aero. With low pressure, the amount of water used requires the use of a recirculating system. Our goal is to design a simple to use system that will be drain to waste.
By creating a wet mist, we get the dependable results of low pressure, but our water consumption is low enough to make drain to waste acceptable. By going drain to waste, it simplifies everything for the grower and provides consistent healthy yields.
[video=youtube_share;ny4G5Ktm4L0]http://youtu.be/ny4G5Ktm4L0[/video]
indrhrvest
New Member
I'll have too keep that in mind!
outlander1
Member
I envy that you have the ability to mould your own tanks. I was looking at that as an option but the setup cost for a mould was too high for making a single unit. I'm now leaning towards bending acrylic.
Cheers,
Cheers,
indrhrvest
New Member
The easiest thing to do in your case would be to get some HDPE sheet, about 1/2 thick. You can give most online plastics companies your demensions and they'll ship it to you already cut. Just build a box out of the HDPE sheet and just screw the plastic together with stainless wood screws. Then run some silicon along the seams to seal it up.
It would work fine for a small hobby system. The HDPE material is stout enough to hold together well with just screws. I don't think Acrylic is the way to go. I had originaly planned on going this route because we could then flat ship the entire system. But after some trial and error, it just wasn't stout enough for commercial use. For hobby use it would be just fine!
Trichy Bastard
Well-Known Member
It seems you have alot of mist run on. Perhaps you could use a dump solenoid but have the pipe routed back to the res. The issue with using larger pipe prone to stretch under pressure such as PVC is the run-on, it will probably make a big dent in your drain to waste losses if you can address it. Another issue is the mist coming out under less than full pressure is going to be making mist droplets much larger than the target 50 microns. I've quoted Atomizer before on this, but it's worth doing again- he said something like "it makes no sense throwing a bucket of paint on a canvas, painting a masterpiece and then throwing another bucket of paint ontop of that" but it really demonstrates a good visual on what is happening. Those 50 micron droplets are gone as soon as the larger splatters cover them up, in this way you can't hope to achieve any better results that low pressure aero unless you can consistently provide a crisp cycle that maintains full pressure from start to finish...
The run on looks to be around 2-3 seconds, droplet size isnt too important if you are overmisting by a good margin. Apart from the cost of wasting nutes unnecessarily, commercial operators are likely bound by all kinds of red tape regarding chemical nute disposal so it`d probably pay to minimise any waste. As small scale growers we can get away with dumping a few hundred litres every few weeks onto the veggie garden, a commercial setup with 100 chambers may have to deal with 5000L a day.
indrhrvest
New Member
It's not really as bad as it looks. Even at twice the rated nozzle consumption, that's just .032 GPH or so. I have a flow meter I'll be installing to measure the actual usage.
Even with a conservative estimate on runoff that's only about 2.88 GPH for the entire system. A 6 second spray is probably going to be more than enough to feed the roots. With the level of saturation we will get I imagine we can do a 4 minute off cycle, or maybe even longer...
I understand where you are coming from, but achieveing the level of perfect misting that some of you more experience HP Aero guys achieve is simply not easily scalable on a larger scale. I'm taking the low pressure concept of growing and just trying to adapt it to less water usage.
Our goals are pretty simple. Build a system that dependably grows herbs and micro greens and can be run drain to waste. If the roots have no fuzz.. I'm not going to stress over it. The plants will still grow into a very marketable product.
I'll know more though once we get into R&D. I'm going to be doing slow motion videogrpahy of the nozzles, measuring flow rates etc.. I'll be collecting hard data to guide us to the final version.
We are on Facebook now if you guys want to check us out http://www.facebook.com/indoorharvest
Trichy Bastard
Well-Known Member
Makes sense. I guess one of the big questions will be if these nozzles tend to clog more than the typical LP sprayers to a point that it makes things harder than they're worth. Having fun watching all your work as I'm sure you're having fun too...
indrhrvest
New Member
Nozzle clogging is something that would have to be dealt with no matter what heads were being used. Sometimes a high maintence item can preform better than a lower maintence item provided you have quality controls in place.
The manifold is designed to be quick swappable. Dealing with clogged nozzles is more about prevenitive maintence than anything else. It's best to assume you are going to have a nozzle clogging problem and build a SOP around that.
Fun.. sometimes.. it can also be stressfull.
