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Re: Foam Fractionators

Posted by James P (JR) on 10/26/2007, 2:26 am, in reply to "Foam Fractionators"
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Hi Joe, well that article is 15 years ago and a lot has changed! Back then I was using TTs and foam fractionators extensively in my 1400 plus gallons of marine tanks. So it was pretty natural to try and do the same with my ponds. Back then, all systems were moving from mechanical aeration to make protein skimming work to a more muscular high effiency venturi driven unit. I should stop for a moment and explain the basic principles of Foam Fractionation ( FF). All organic materials broken down and deposited in water are electrically charged. And they are attracted to the that thin layer of water that is in touch with the atmosphere. This is why proteins and other materials like lipids, dyes and starches are found at the surface of the water. They are called DOCs in the hobby literature. Using this principle you can add bubbles to the water and this will attract and capture proteins ( DOC) as the bubbles rise to the surface as they naturally do. You can see this same action at the base of water falls or in waves hitting the beach and depositing foam. The more bubbles the better and the tiny the bubbles, the more DOC that can be captured. So foam 'quality' is key here, and as this turns out, one of the major areas of disappointment when using these units on freshwater systems compared to marine systems. This has to do with the tension of water and the formation of the bubbles themselves and also their ability to stay in tact for some period of time. The second consideration in protein skimming is contact time. So the units I was using back then were counter current units. This meant that water would crash against itself and also dwell in the chamber a long time allowing for complete exposure to the DOCs and also complete maximizing bubble formation. FF never really caught on in the USA because many people started building their own rather than buying a proper unit. I'm all for DIY but the finished product needs to work! No one realized that what they were getting from spa venturi and PVC columns was not near the true potential of the concept. These home made units were quirky and finicky. So they were never really working and that gave FF a bad name after a few years. Yet professionally made units did indeed work. When I tweeked my tall trickle towers it was no surprise that the falling foaming action that I was seeing in the small commercial FFs was also appearing at the base of my TTs. Trouble is, there was no way to remove that foam layer. So I gave up on making the TTs the sole FF units- a real shame as I was so close to results. Most recently I was pleased and fascinated to see that Clarity ( Bryan Bateman first made me aware of these even though ads have been around for a while) at Koi America. These guys had cracked the code!! They figured a way to use a TT to create the foam just as I had created, but went one step further and created a way to separate the trapped foamate out of circulation at the base - very clever, and my hate's off to them! JR

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Responses: Re: Foam Fractionators - Joe M 10/26/2007, 4:17 pm « Back to thread

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