DIY Ozone System

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I had been tossing around ideas for an inexpensive Ozone system for a few days and it is now in operation. I like to design with things that are commonly available and for as little as possible.

Ozone systems will basically do the same thing as a UV sterilizer but with the added benifit of chemically consuming nitrates, and destroying dissolved organics. I don't have first hand experience with either so I let a tank get out of hand so I could measure the results.

I was convinced that I wasn't going to do a DIY thread on it, so I didn't take suitable pictures. Anyway, where pictures are lacking, I'll post the finished product and explain it the best that I can.

I'd like to start backwards with the system at the carbon bed because this is what everyone familiar with reef systems will be familiar with. At the end of the thread, I'll post a video of the system in operation to illustrate it all.


Here is the Carbon Bed. It is the 2" pipe...Nothing special really...
The carbon bed converts the ozone back into oxygen after it has been allowed to do its thing.

 

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One more of the carbon bed showing the spillway back to the tank.

 

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This picture shows how the carbon is kept inside the carbon chamber. There are pieces of window screen glued inside. To do the bottom piece, the screen is glued onto the fitting and then trimmed to a custom fit. Then it is glued onto the pipe. The upper screen is just placed in the fitting after the area has been glued.

 

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After the parts have been allowed to air out over night, I filled the chamber with fresh activated carbon and then flushed it by simply running water through it.

The top fitting is threaded to recieve a cap. It just wasn't installed at the time I took the pictures.

 

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The next piece of equipment is the Mixing and Contact Chamber. This is where the ozone is allowed to mix with the water and do its thing.

This picture is of the original design with an airstone inside the mixing chamber. I later changed the injection location to the suction side of the pump. That modification is covered next.

The clear mixing chamber is a down draft style where the water flows downward and the bubbles try to rise up through the collumn.

The loops of plumbing compose the contact chamber. This gives the ozone and resulting ORP (Oxidation Reduction Potential) products time to work. After I got the prototype tuned, I found that about 90% of the influent bubbles were absorbed into the water by the time they had exited the contact chamber.

 

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Here is that pump modification. It is a sponge prefilter with an airline to feed directly to the suction side of the impeller.

 

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And here is the pump modification installed.

 

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This next piece of equipment is the heart and soul of it all. It is the Ozone Generator.

For the ozone source I used a Wally-World branded Bathroom Ionic Breeze. To capture the ozone it had to be sealed in a container with a positive seal. I drilled two holes in the lid to tightly seal to lengths of airline tubing. They are not glued in any way, they are sealed using only friction. For the power cord, I cut the end off an extension cord and then re-attached it after threading it through another hole that I drilled in the bottom. This hole had to be sealed with silicone.

One of the airline tubes in the lid terminates shortly after it enters the lid. The other has a length of rigid airline tub extending to the bottom of the container. The ozone is slightly heavier than air so I chose to draw off of the bottom of the chamber.

 

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And the ozone chamber assembled...

 

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Here is a picture that shows the effectiveness of the mixing chamber. The tube from the pump has a stream of larger bubbles but in the mixing chamber, they break up into tiny bubbles almost like a froth.