Lanthanum chloride reactor?

[Matt LeBaron]

Keri O'Neil talked about using a lanthanum chloride reactor for her work during her presentation yesterday. She used a .5 micron filter to remove the white powder that is left after it reacts with the phosphate.

 

Has anyone built a DIY reactor using a similar method? And what is the potential damage should the stuff escape into the tank?

 

Seems like you could use a dual stage reactor, slowly pump in the LaCl3 at the pump, the first chamber is the mixing area and then have the .5 micron filter in the second chamber. Ms. O'Neil commented that the filter filled up quick but that was on her very large setup. I wonder how often those of us with much smaller tanks would have to change it?

 

This just seems like a potentially much better solution to phosphate control than GFO. Curious if anyone has tried it?

[gmerek2]

I hear rumor that it knocks out inverts, settles on bottom an in rocks. All problems she is not concerned with a bare bottom high flow lifeless reef restoration program. Great option for reef restoration not reef aquarium.

[AlanM]

Beananimal had problems with his fish when he was running LaCl3 which went away when he took it offline. Ive heard that the LaPO4 precipitate is stable, though, so it doesnt release the PO4 back into the water column and is chemically safe for animals. The precipitate is really tiny particles, though, so the theory was that they irritated/clogged the gills of fish and inverts but left corals unaffected because they are set up to deal with fine particulate stuff anyway.

[Sharkey18]

I use LaCl and it worked really well. I did not set up a reactor, but I would if I used it again. 

 

I used the triple filter sock method to contain the precipitate. It worked really well for containment but the socks had to be changed almost every day if I wanted to run a regular drip. I had no loss of fish or inverts and I have several ornamental shrimp. 

 

I think it would work really well if there was some way of creating a very low flow settlement area, where the precipitate could drop out of solution before the water returned to the tank.

 

I imagine some sort of low flow closed loop system… 

Edited January 26, 2014 by Sharkey18

[basser9]

I will post in a little bit my setup.

I have a large MTC calcium reactor setup to run

 LC.

First chamber has bioballs for the precipitate to settle on and the 2nd

 reactor has very tightly packed  floss.

I have the effluent running thru a .5 micron bag.

2 months running and nothing has made it to the .5 micron bag

 the tightly packed floss works great and it appears that most of

 the precipitate is being contained in the first chamber.

I tried a single pass reactor made from a 5 gallon bucket it did not

 work as i had hoped the recir reactor appears to be the way to go.

[Matt LeBaron]

How do you dose the LaCl basser9? Just like a dosing pump?

 

If a good system for this could be developed it seems to me that a commercial product would sell well. I wonder if anyone is working on that?

[AlanM]

Reefbuilders featured a really expensive one by some German company.

 

I think a calcium reactor with bioballs seems like a fine way to go. Maybe the seabones by Avast using the co2 input for lacl instead.

[basser9]

I use a peristaltic pump reefdosing.com they are just kangeroo med pumps

 you can get a med pump on ebay for under 100.00.

One thing you need to do is keep the LC mixed up or it settles i use a 5 gallon

 bucket with a pump inside.

Some calcium reactors may pose a problem because where the LC enters it will

 form deposits my MTC enters at the top not at the pump which makes it perfect.

Any duel reactor will work great just drill a inlet on top of the first reactor and you are

 good to go.

[Jim Mc]

I talked to here a bit about it after the meet.  I asked her about using a BRS two part carbon GFO rector with the first chamber empty and the second with a sediment filter.  She thought it would work but that the filter would need changing often.  Not sure how long often is but I am still considering trying it.

[ctenophore]

Reefbuilders featured a really expensive one by some German company.

 

I think a calcium reactor with bioballs seems like a fine way to go. Maybe the seabones by Avast using the co2 input for lacl instead.

Interesting. What basser9 says makes sense. On our recirc ca design, just inject the LaCl at the co2 scavenging port in the lid, and cap the co2 intake port.

 

I wonder if you could combine the two uses of the ca reactor. Will LaCl still precipitate po4 at a low pH? Add a second chamber full of filter floss rather than ca media. Use the vibe base to keep the precipitate from clogging the ca media in the first chamber. If the LaCl needs stirred periodically, just put the bottle on top of the reactor on the vibe base.

[dante411x]

Isn't it important to give the LaCl  contact time with water? I had the idea of buying about 30ft of some kind of hose, probably a 1/2" id black hose and a cheap pump, something in the MJ 400 range. putting the MJ in the sump connected to the coil of hose and putting a slow dosing pump that would drip LaCl into the hose somewhere right after the pump. Coil up the hose and add filter socks at the end of the coil. That way LaCl has about 30 feet of contact with slow moving water to precipitate and then it all gets caught in filter sock. Seems like the way to go to make sure no precipitate or LaCl ever enters the system itself, it all stays confined in the hose/filter sock.

Could make sure there's no temp drop by keeping most of the coil inside the sump or if there's not enough contact time to precipitate all of LaCl, get a bigger length of hose.

[AlanM]

The recirculating Ca reactor that Justin is talking about gives it lots of contact time.  Basically you're dripping a little LaCl3 in the top and recirculating the water through the reactor over and over and letting a trickle in and out.  Kind of the same principle as a recirculating skimmer except in a reactor. 

 

I wonder if dripping a little dilute LaCl3 into the water input to a recirculating skimmer would work just as well.

[ctenophore]

My guess is the problem with using a skimmer is the throughput is so high that the .5 micron filter sock needed to trap the precipitate would clog very quickly.  Additionally, the dwell time for most skimmers also probably isn't long enough to allow full reaction time.  I suspect if you significantly increase the dwell time (maybe 0.1x to 0.2x system volume/hr) it would work well, but then you'd be underskimming.  I think the combination Ca/La reactor might be the best, since the flow rates are similar.

[dante411x]

The recirculating Ca reactor that Justin is talking about gives it lots of contact time. Basically you're dripping a little LaCl3 in the top and recirculating the water through the reactor over and over and letting a trickle in and out. Kind of the same principle as a recirculating skimmer except in a reactor.

 

That's the thing though. A trickle. How long would it take to process 300g of water?

 

Or am I wrong with how this works? Does it matter how fast the water goes through something like this?

 

 

Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[ctenophore]

It's a tradeoff between processing all the water quickly and having to constantly upkeep the filter mechanism vs. less throughput and more time for algae to uptake the free phosphate before it makes it to the reactor.  A self cleaning 0.5 micron filter is really what's needed.  Hmm.

[Jim Mc]

If your worried about reaction time I have used Lanthium the reaction is instant as long as there is a calcium source which isn't a problem in most tanks.  The biggest problem is not contact time with the water it is getting the crap out of the water after the reaction.