Waste water treatment inspired autonomous water changer - please leave feedback - want to gauge interest!

[ashwinv96]

Hey Everyone,
I am an ex-ARC member (ex only because I moved to Tallahassee about a year ago). I graduated from Georgia Tech and am doing my PhD at FSU - specializing in machine learning for control systems. I live and breath aquariums and am a huge reefer myself. My latest creation is a concept for a smart change system. This is unique in that it creates "clean tap water" from within your tanks itself. It aims to emulate what a water treatment facility does and leverages some intelligent software to treat your water. Please check out my landing page and let me know your feedback in the feedback section at the end of the page (or here in the comments). This thing currently works well in a lab setting with turbo snails and extremely high nutrient levels - but of course it means nothing if it doesn't help those I am building it for. Please help me (and my team) build a device that solves a real problem!

I am happy to answer any question - technical or not - and want to hear all your suggestions. ARC is where I fell in love with reefing so I would love to build prototypes for anyone that is willing to let me collect data from the devices I give them for no cost. Thank you in advance for any help you may be able to provide.

Link to my landing page (no gimmics, no click-bait) : https://ashwinvadivel.wixsite.com/treatmytank

 

[90gDreams]

So this a way to break it down the chains past the nitrate stage and to actual release of nitrogen?

 

[ichthyoid]

So, does this automate/optimize an anamox based process?

Fwiw,
I ran (& still have) an anoxic methanol based denitrification filter on a fowlr tank years ago. It took weeks to get it online, but once the batch frequency & methanol dosing was worked out, it yielded some of the best water parameters I’ve ever seen in a mature marine aquarium. There was also a trickle filter on the system for the nitrification part of the process,

After a while, you could supplement with strontium nitrate, to help balance NO3/PO4 stoichiometry & provide a strontium ligand to precipitate phosphate.

There is a long thread on Reef Central that covers a group of reefers that resurrected this process, if interested.

Thanks for posting this!

 

[ashwinv96]

@ichthyoid @90gDreams Thanks for both of your comments! Yes I share your desire for better denitrification devices. Nitrate export is tricky as I am sure both of you know. The anoxic conditions required for denitrifiers is not conducive for the rest of the tank. So we usually resort to denitrification methods - either through low flow refugiums or sulfur or methanol based denitrification filters. These can be efficient - but dosing the right amount of carbon/sulfur compounds into the latter is tricky, also autonomously monitoring the process is even harder.
This device aims to conduct both nitrification and denitrification at near optimal efficiencies. To optimize nitrification, the process is not too hard. We can monitor the DO concentrations and pH. Since nitrifiers use up a ton of DO and alkalinity to convert ammonia to nitrate, we have a pretty good idea when it is time to "switch" to chamber to denitrification mode. Denitrification is trickier and doing it efficiently is even harder. The way we do it is by identifying markers in pH, ORP, DO, temp, among other measurements that signal where in the process our water is. Of course the relationship between these quantities is highly nonlinear and that is where we use machine learning. This device not only monitors these processes in the filter, but also regulates O2 diffusers and alkalinity dosers to keep our bacteria operating at their optimal ranges. The aim is to conduct both nitrification and denitrification at near optimal efficiencies - while doing them both in one single chamber. In terms of methanol/sulfur dosing, I've found so far by closely monitoring and regulating this process the addition of external carbon sources in usually not even required - however I will be doing a lot more experiments.
Please let me know what you think! I would love more feedback. If you are interested in following my development, please leave your contact info in the feedback section on the landing page! It will help me keep account of those that are interested!