New Euro-Reef Skimmer Model RC4000

[euroreef]

New Euro-Reef Skimmer Model RC4000

Here are a few pics of our latest model Protein Skimmer, the RC4000. It uses a Reeflo/ Sequence Hammerhead pump with PinWheel. Our latest test shows it pulling upwards of 60lpm or air!! that's 3600 lph!

http://www.euro-reef.com/defaultImages/Pics/RC4000/RC4000-001.jpg

The specs are as follows:

18"D x 48"T Reaction Chamber; 1/4" wall American Made Cell Cast Tube
16"D x 16"T Collection Cup: 1/4" wall American Made Cell Cast Tube
6.5"D x 22"T Neck: 1/4" wall American Made Cell Cast Tube
Patent Pending Euro-Transition
80" overall height
1/2" PVC Sheet base, Coupling Ring, Cup Base and Lid.
Airflow meter included.

Rated at +/- 4000 gallons with average bio-load.

NEARLY SILENT OPERATION!!!

All Acrylic X PVC connections are Triple Seam Hot Air Welded.

Estimated Street Price: $7998.00

Custom options available: Spray head for auto-rinse,

We have 3 units in production for a Shop in Florida, 1 for the Waikiki Aquarium and 5 more orders pending.

This thing rocks!!
http://www.euro-reef.com/defaultImages/Pics/RC4000/RC4000-002.jpg http://www.euro-reef.com/defaultImages/Pics/RC4000/RC4000-003.jpg http://www.euro-reef.com/defaultImages/Pics/RC4000/RC4000-004.jpg http://www.euro-reef.com/defaultImages/Pics/RC4000/RC4000-005.jpg

The photo of the Dwyer airlflow meter is a bit blown out, but what you're seeing is a meter that max's out at 50lpm and it's pegged hard!! We have a new, LARGER meter coming that we will mount on the skimmer.

[Jim_S]

Wow!! That is a monster!!!

How about some shots of the pump??!!!

[euroreef]

Once we get the production models finished, we'll post more pics including the pump etc. :)

[EuroReef Tec1]

How about some pics that dont make me look like my head is cut in half! LOL

[euroreef]

Beggars can't be choosers!!! :):)

Besides, the "Severed Head" look is in!!

[hahnmeister]

Looks great, and I know there is some height to contend with there, but 3600lph only? I would say that is a bare minimum for this pump, no? Is that just a preliminary venturi test or something? It seems like this pump should be able to do much more.

[euroreef]

hahnmeister,

As I know you are part of an ongoing discussion regarding skimming technology and ideology, what would you consider to be enough air for a skimmer this size? This is our first adventure in to large scale skimmers and we are wide open on ideas and suggestions.

We are refining the impeller and venturi designs, even working with mesh material- so we are sure that advancements in design and performance are forthcoming.

What is difficult to show in these pictures is the movement of the bubbles/water within the skimmer. It is very gentle and slow. The pumps power consumption drops from 500w+ to around 220w, that's over 50%. That has a dramatic affect on velocity and turbulence which is a good thing.

The other consideration regarding air intake is the size and number (volume) of bubbles that are produced. If you can decrease bubble size enough, with the same amount of air you can multiply your surface area exponentially. The question is, "Is more air always better?".

What we hope to do with this design is provide a major improvement on offerings in the medium to large scale protein skimmer category. Most of the current designs rely on pressure side induction applications which are inherently inefficient because of the size and lack in consistency in the size of bubbles produced.

We welcome any and all suggestions, comments and observations. :)

-Jeff

[sjm817]

<a href=showthread.php?s=&postid=10862284#post10862284 target=_blank>Originally posted</a> by EuroReef Tec1
How about some pics that dont make me look like my head is cut in half! LOL
You look familiar. Weren't you Tim's neighbor on that TV show, Home Improvement?

Tim would be proud of this skimmer! More Power!

[IRISSERVICE]

can this handle a nano tank?

[hahnmeister]

I agree that more isnt always better... ATI's bubblemasters, with their 'musclecar' mentality are a good example where adding higher and higher output pumps can end up working against you... no doubt. Ill be more specific...

It would seem that dual darts would be a better option then the single hammerhead. Last time I remember seeing a dart, it had almost the same size volute and outlet as the dart. The hammerhead is just more wattage/power. But this doesnt mean anything to a needlewheel... not as much as speed, volute volume, and outlet diameter... kind of how Klaus converts a Laguna pond pump into a Red Dragon. Unlike a pure water pump, a needlewheel doesnt rely on 'head pressure' so much... you know?

I do agree on the bubble size, turbulence, etc... and dont get me wrong, I like the overall design (esp the 80" tall height), but a single dart needlewheel could do that with an alita 40 linear pump, and then some, for half the wattage. And with turbulence control through a diffuser of some sort, a 12" diameter body can handle 4000lph or air. 18" in diameter should be good for 9000lph.

If the skimmer is 80" tall, from the scale in the photograph, the waterline looks like its about 50" from the bottom. The pump outlet is about 15"? from the bottom, and plumbed back to the skimmer via a 90 degree elbow. Thats got to hurt its output. If you made a mount so the pump would be face mounted to the skimmer, like the other RC skimmers, you would lose about 30% of the head-pressure on the air inlet of the venturi/pump, and gain back the restriction from all that pipe on the output of the pump (not to mention that elbow). Maybe the pump is doing more than 60lpm... as I see you dont have a proper air meter to tell yet. Thats understandable... you might be getting 80lpm and not even know it. As long as you have an 8" neck on that thing, it should be fine.

With that pump being mounted like that, if you pumped the inlet through a bubble plate (huge change for ER... maybe too large), or just a central inlet pipe (like a H&S A110 type or a Fauna Marin), then the pump outlet could be short and right into the bottom of the skimmer... using the entire body height then. Considering the placement of the pump and the venturi is already at the lowest possible point, having the pump outlet pump into the bottom of the skimmer like this isnt going to hurt anything. If anything, by doing this, you could cut the skimmer height by a good 15" and you would gain back performance that way.

[mavgi]

as hahnmeister in my opinion the pump to far from the skimmer more then that the venturi far to i think it's need to be closer like this picture it will increase more air :

http://i44.photobucket.com/albums/f30/mavgi/MM1158_1.jpg


i am not sure but this pump rate 5800GPH and 350W , if you can i suggest to test the laguna 4200....

[euroreef]

Hahn and Mavgi,

Thank you for the comments and suggestions. :)

We will try mounting the pump parallel to the body, though I am not convinced this will make a large difference in performance. The pump is direct drive and back pressure doesn't affect performance as much as push power consumption. Mounting the pump like that will require a special fixture which may drive up the cost so we need to make sure it is justified by increased performance.

We are also planning on integrating a diffuser into the reaction chamber if necessary. We are very happy with the movement inside the chamber right now and want to be sure we can maintain that movement or improve upon it. Once we have the higher range air flow meter next week, we can get some hard numbers and look at the performance in terms of airflow, bubble size, turbulence and pump efficiency.

The idea of running two darts is interesting, we will try that this week as well. The Dart we set up on our RC1000/Dart prototype performed well, but was a bit too turbulent. If we could get the air intake up to 4000lph, closer to what the current RC1000 does with 5 EHEIMs (3600lph), that would be a good match. The additional air should moderate the turbulence as well which would also be a big help.

We also have some 16" diameter tubes we are about to start playing with I was planning on using the DART for that body size. I have a 30" and 36" tall chamber to work with. The transition is being tooled for and we hope to have a sample to make a prototype in 2-3 weeks.

Regarding the Alita pump and air injection, we experimented with that idea quite awhile ago without good results, but will should try it again with these direct drive pumps. The concern was with the ability to maintain bubble size as the forced air tends to cause the pump to cavitate. With these direct drive pumps, it seems as though some folks are getting a good result in terms of airflow, but we'll have to see how it translates into bubble size and performance.

9000lph of air may be a bit much for this reaction chamber, we are hoping to buy a 28" diameter x 48" tall tube early next year to make a model RC10K with, airflow of that level and higher may be better suited for that size of reaction chamber. We'll see :)

I'll keep you all posted and again, thank you very much for the comments, we really appreciate them!

-Jeff Macare

[hahnmeister]

Yeah, needlewheels dont take to force feeding as well as thread/mesh/loop wheels. You can force feed a meshwheel well over its normal capacity and it still churns out 'shaving cream'. needlewheels seem to start passing larger bubbles at much more than 20% above their normal output. The other thing is when you force feed, you want to remove the venturi (just in case you didnt). Otherwise all that air in the venturi chokes the water flow to the pump, and the same problems arise.

As far as the pump placement... the pump being direct drive or not doesnt make a dfference... when you are dealing with an asperating pump setup, the back pressure will always mean alot, unless the pump just moves alot of water for not so much air (like a 5:1 water to air ratio or something like that... a-la oceanrunner 3500). Once any pump goes from impeller blades to a 'mixing wheel', and a good percentage of its volute has air bubbles in it, the pump is no longer a 'high-head' pump. For this reason, the best needlewheel pumps have always been the best pond pumps... large volute, large output, smaller impeller, etc.

I hear you on the dart though... it does throw alot of water for what it does. I can get almost that much air with a Laguna 2400 at 85 watts (3400lph), so its safe to say that the extra 40-ish watts that the dart uses is all for water movement. Thats pretty much an extra 1000gph of water over the Laguna or Red Dragon of the same water throughput. IMO, just not the best pump for a needlewheel in the first place, unlike the Lagunas. Thats what makes me wonder what about the Hammerhead would make it so different... Its a higher head pump with an even smaller inlet/outlet/volute than a dart in proportion to the flow/wattage.

I wonder if ReefFlo could put a custom enlarged volute/outlet on these pumps... like with a 2-3" outlet and a 30% larger volute... I bet they would rock even more.

[Lunchbucket]

Freaking SWEET!! Can't wait to see more pics! That baby is BIG!

Seems everyone is going w/ sequence pumps for skimmers. Seem to be a great option.

Can't wait to see the progress
Lunchbucket

[euroreef]

Here's a shot of 3 RC4000's in production:
http://www.euro-reef.com/defaultImages/Pics/RC4000/RC4000-006.jpg

[euroreef]

Here are the pics from our test today. We flipped the pump and meshed the impeller....http://www.euro-reef.com/defaultImages/Pics/RC4000/RC4000%20REV2-001.jpg
As you can see, the pump pulls a little more air in this configuration and with the mesh wheel... like 25% more!!! What the meter reads is 4.2 SCFM which is 252 SCFH which is 7131 LPH!!!!
http://www.euro-reef.com/defaultImages/Pics/RC4000/RC4000%20REV2-003.jpg
You can barely see the bubbles they are so small.... It may be too much air for the skimmer.....

[hahnmeister]

Thats more like it. What was the gain just by flipping the pump? What is the wattage with the higher air intake? Im betting it dropped a bit. The danger is that the power factor might have taken a crap as well... which means the pump will be much hotter.

7000-7200lph is well within the capacity of an 18" diameter body (9000lph is the max for an asperating powered skimmer that size). An ideal neck size would be a 12" diameter pipe... minimum 10" diameter. This would also allow you to cut the height a good 6".

Dont know what the turbulence is like inside this thing, but some sort of diverter/diffuser on the inside might help. Not to push it, but if you used a bubble plate, like a BK or something, you could cut at least 15" off the height and get the same results. So between the 6" less on the neck height, and 15" off the base... thats almost 2' less. Dont get me wrong... Im all for height, but not when its not really doing anything. Just thinking that in this case, 18" diameter and 12" diameter pipe are pretty $$$$... having to make a bubble plate might cost a bit, but something tells me saving a few hundred on acrylic pipe might make it worth it. Or you could keep the full height, and move the neck transition up a good 6"... the extra head pressure on the pump would reduce the air intake a bit.

[Lunchbucket]

HOLY WHITE PVC LOOKING SKIMMER BATMAN. Looks unreal. Can't wait to see more test results

Lunchbucket

[euroreef]

Visually we estimate that the bubbles in the reaction chamber are mostly .25mm OD with a small quantity of .50mm OD near the transition.

We added a 45º Ell to the discharge and while it did help with turbulence and filled the chamber to within 3" of the bottom, it also dropped air intake by 169.2 lph to a total of 6961.8 lph

The power consumption in this configuration is about 380 watts at 3.4 amps.

Today we are going to swap out the mesh-wheel for the pinwheel and look at the difference in performance over all. We will also put the pump back in it's original position with the mesh-wheel to look at the result in that configuration.

Fun Stuff!! :):):)

-Jeff

[hahnmeister]

Well... rather than an elbow on the output.... how about a bubble plate? You shouldnt see the drop in output from the back-pressure then either. I know bubble plates arent a very 'euro-reef' thing though... but in this case...

[Lunchbucket]

Yeah I'd say fun stuff!!

Lunchbucket

[euroreef]

Hahn,

A diffuser is a definite option. We certainly aren't phobic about them :) Once we finish the additional tests, we can determine if an diffuser will be required. One issue we have to deal with is the fact that we have an 18" OD to 6.5" OD reduction for the current transition design so we have to address the turbulence and air intake. Until we can modify the transition to handle a larger neck, likely 9.5 to 10", we will be limited as to how much air we can introduce without a diffuser.

-Jeff

[euroreef]

With the Pin-Wheel, the motor in the parallel position, and a 45º ell on the outlet, it pulls 5603 LPH @ 2.8 amps. The foam head is more stable and turbulence is good. Without the 45º ell, it pulls 5943 LPH @ 2.8 amps.

[euroreef]

With the Mesh-Wheel, the motor perpendicular at the base, and no ell at the outlet, the pump pulls 6112.80 LPH air @ 3.8 amps. The foam head is stable and turbulence is good. This is a good match for the the current configuration.

We are waiting on a pair of Darts that should arrive next week. We will run some dual pumps tests on this skimmer as well as some more single pump tests on the 12" and 16" skimmer bodies we have. More fun every day!!

-Jeff

[Lunchbucket]

PICS PICS PICS :D

[cward]

Great thread!!! Do you have any updates? The Dart needle wheel can't handle the head pressure of a tall skimmer like this without the use of an air pump, which is really a crutch.
Any pics of the impeller?