I hope my question is allowed here. Please be kind.
I work as a chemist in the lab and want to use an aquarium cooler to cool things down. Mainly because I think they are good enough for my purpose and they are a fraction of the cost of a lab cooler (that goes to -80C / -112F). To get some "heat buffer" I want to use a 64 liter tank and fill it with water that I cool to 4C / 39F.
The equipment that has arrived: Teco 1000H cooler / Eheim CompactON 600 / Eheim CompactON 2100 / Eheim Universal 2400 L/h + hoses. Nothing has been installed, everything is still boxed.
Situation: the 64 liter tank is on a workbench. Next to it is something called a rotary evaporator ("rotavap"). It has a cooling spiral and I want to pump cold water through it. Then close to the workbench (with walking space in between) is a fume hood where I want to have a smaller tank (like 2-3 liters) that needs to be cooled as well. The tubing runs across the ceiling, hence the large 2400 L/h pump that can pump against some height.
The problem is that I'm a bit uncertain how to exactly set everything up and I'd like some advice here.
My first idea was to place the 2400 L/h pump in the large tank and have the hoses connected to this pump and running to the smaller tank. However, the problem is that I now think it looks like that placing the 2400 L/h pump in the big tank won't help much because it doesn't mix the water from the small tank with the cool water from the big tank.
So I'm trying to figure out what the best setup/solution is to mix the water between the two tanks. There are some solutions I am thinking of:
1) Make a T-joint close to the 2400 L/h pump with the T's in the big tank, so the water gets mixed. However, I am worried it can create a flow imbalance and can overflow the small tank.
2) Keep the 2400 L/h pump in a "closed loop" with this pump connected to a copper spiral (for effective heat transfer) placed in the big tank and the hoses ending in the small tank.
3) Use 2 T-joints on the cooler so you connect 2 pumps connected a single cooler. Each pump then circulates the water of its own tank then. But since the pumps are sort of connected together I am worried about a water imbalance and potential overflow of the small tank. Is this a possible risk? The setup is also running unattended and I dont want to come back the next morning to find all the water of my tank on the floor of the lab!
Suggestions / advice welcome!
I work as a chemist in the lab and want to use an aquarium cooler to cool things down. Mainly because I think they are good enough for my purpose and they are a fraction of the cost of a lab cooler (that goes to -80C / -112F). To get some "heat buffer" I want to use a 64 liter tank and fill it with water that I cool to 4C / 39F.
The equipment that has arrived: Teco 1000H cooler / Eheim CompactON 600 / Eheim CompactON 2100 / Eheim Universal 2400 L/h + hoses. Nothing has been installed, everything is still boxed.
Situation: the 64 liter tank is on a workbench. Next to it is something called a rotary evaporator ("rotavap"). It has a cooling spiral and I want to pump cold water through it. Then close to the workbench (with walking space in between) is a fume hood where I want to have a smaller tank (like 2-3 liters) that needs to be cooled as well. The tubing runs across the ceiling, hence the large 2400 L/h pump that can pump against some height.
The problem is that I'm a bit uncertain how to exactly set everything up and I'd like some advice here.
My first idea was to place the 2400 L/h pump in the large tank and have the hoses connected to this pump and running to the smaller tank. However, the problem is that I now think it looks like that placing the 2400 L/h pump in the big tank won't help much because it doesn't mix the water from the small tank with the cool water from the big tank.
So I'm trying to figure out what the best setup/solution is to mix the water between the two tanks. There are some solutions I am thinking of:
1) Make a T-joint close to the 2400 L/h pump with the T's in the big tank, so the water gets mixed. However, I am worried it can create a flow imbalance and can overflow the small tank.
2) Keep the 2400 L/h pump in a "closed loop" with this pump connected to a copper spiral (for effective heat transfer) placed in the big tank and the hoses ending in the small tank.
3) Use 2 T-joints on the cooler so you connect 2 pumps connected a single cooler. Each pump then circulates the water of its own tank then. But since the pumps are sort of connected together I am worried about a water imbalance and potential overflow of the small tank. Is this a possible risk? The setup is also running unattended and I dont want to come back the next morning to find all the water of my tank on the floor of the lab!
Suggestions / advice welcome!