Did a search for "Kipp's" on here and found no results. Its an older method so that may be why. If someone has already looked into this and I missed it then I suck, but please be kind and hit me up with the right link despite my suckage.
Back in the day: before about 1940 in the US, you couldn't just buy a gas cylinder in a lot of places. So gas was generated in the lab as needed. But you didn't want to just dump a bunch of reactants together cause then you'd have a huge, uncontained gas cloud. And probably die with a lot of the gases they were making. A way was needed to make gas in a controlled way and automatically stop the reaction once a certain pressure was reached, enter Kipp's apparatus/generator. Its an old bit of kit, but super clever in how it works. Here's a vid (bit of a loud noise warning at the start )
It was mainly used to make H2S. But it can make anything that involves the reaction of two chemicals where one is solid and the other is liquid. If you mix calcium carbonate (marble chips) and hydrochloric acid (muratic acid aka concrete cleaner) you get a salt plus CO2 gas. This is how CO2 used to be made in the lab. In our grow areas we'd just crank the needle valve way down and let it run constantly through a water bubbler (to scrub out any vaporized HCl.)
I want to do a cost comparison between running a commercial CO2 generator, kipp's apparatus, and the fermentation method to see which works out cheaper per mole of CO2. Has this already been done?
Oh, if you know of other methods for making CO2 you want cost compared let me know and I'll do them too.
Back in the day: before about 1940 in the US, you couldn't just buy a gas cylinder in a lot of places. So gas was generated in the lab as needed. But you didn't want to just dump a bunch of reactants together cause then you'd have a huge, uncontained gas cloud. And probably die with a lot of the gases they were making. A way was needed to make gas in a controlled way and automatically stop the reaction once a certain pressure was reached, enter Kipp's apparatus/generator. Its an old bit of kit, but super clever in how it works. Here's a vid (bit of a loud noise warning at the start )
It was mainly used to make H2S. But it can make anything that involves the reaction of two chemicals where one is solid and the other is liquid. If you mix calcium carbonate (marble chips) and hydrochloric acid (muratic acid aka concrete cleaner) you get a salt plus CO2 gas. This is how CO2 used to be made in the lab. In our grow areas we'd just crank the needle valve way down and let it run constantly through a water bubbler (to scrub out any vaporized HCl.)
I want to do a cost comparison between running a commercial CO2 generator, kipp's apparatus, and the fermentation method to see which works out cheaper per mole of CO2. Has this already been done?
Oh, if you know of other methods for making CO2 you want cost compared let me know and I'll do them too.
Thing is a lot of middle America is in the same situation. We're too far away from everything, both welding shops and weed stores for the easy solution to work out. Weed is legal in my state but the nearest weed shop is in the same city as the nearest welding shop. Certainly if you can just get a bottle refilled, have the money, and the grow size justifies it, then a bottle would make the most sense. That's what I'd do if I wasn't so far out.
