Sciencemadness Discussion Board

Bio reactor contoller

Little_Ghost_again - 26-11-2014 at 16:24

Hi
I have a phillip harris fermentation kit (full kit) with controller, it has some serious short comings, and most of the electronics side are rubbish, I am going to be rebuilding most of it, if anyone is interested in this I will post full schematics and pics.
The heater etc they use is very easy to replicate at home, as it most of there system.
But I dont want to goto the hastle of posting it all as I do it if there is no interest

smaerd - 28-11-2014 at 17:05

Little Ghost, I think posting those things would open up a discussion for improvements and maybe some home efforts for bioreactors or chemical reactors in general. Even if the thread doesn't take off right away, maybe a year from now someone will take an interest in it or be looking for information about it. I know I'd be curious to see what they did.

violet sin - 28-11-2014 at 23:36

personally I would store/bookmark the information for a future project, if it were available. however, right now = exactly zero time for experimentation ( technically, negative time). so I wouldn't be able to contribute in any way :( also, I agree with smaerd: even if there isn't a ton of interest to begin with, that doesn't mean some one won't randomly show up and explode the page count in a matter of days.

Mesa - 1-12-2014 at 06:45

I'd also be quite appreciative if you were to post said pics/tech drawings. If you do, please get some decent shots of the sensor's for substrate feeding etc.

WChase501 - 10-12-2014 at 16:44

I would be very interested especially on the electronics end

confused - 11-12-2014 at 02:41

Same here, really interested in the biorextor

MrHomeScientist - 11-12-2014 at 13:16

Everything is of interest to someone!

When posting this information I'd recommend deleting this thread and starting fresh, so readers don't have to wade through the chorus of "interested!" every time :)

aga - 11-12-2014 at 14:29

Yep. All of interest.

If you need a hand designing the heater controller(s) etc, pipe up !

... wanders off to find out what a 'phillip harris fermentation kit' actually is ...

Edit

Oh. It's a pot with 5 necks.

Presumably a Heater and temperature control required.
What other sensors ?
pH ?

[Edited on 11-12-2014 by aga]

morganbw - 11-12-2014 at 14:37

If you have the time, please post it up.

Little_Ghost_again - 24-12-2014 at 13:27

Hi
I am a bit behind with this but have tried a few designs out, after the holidays I will post up all the info.
In the end I also added a really cool sensor from silicon labs that also allows me to measure turbidity, although this is somewhat subjective from the point of view that there are many ways of doing it and so I did a scale from 1-100 and printed out a picture showing 10 major steps of it.
You will get a better idea when I post the write up. Considering the price if you buy one brand new and the make (phillip harris) the controller they use is utter shite! the pump controller they use is a awful magnetic solenoid driving a thick wire staple type thing that just crimps the pipe closed, I replaced this with a decent scavenged dosing pump.
The heater is just a resistor run at 24V in a glass tube, but anyway I will post it all up with the mods I made and the schematics and pcb layouts in case anyone wants to have a go at making one. Next on my list is a reversing ball mill with soft start and variable speed, I will also put a mixed speed feature in as well.


aga - 24-12-2014 at 14:53

Any ref to the turbidity sensor ?

Little_Ghost_again - 24-12-2014 at 16:56

Quote: Originally posted by aga  
Any ref to the turbidity sensor ?


High yes its just this
http://www.silabs.com/Support%20Documents/TechnicalDocs/Si11...

They are pretty sensitive, I also added a IR one just to compare, that one is just a IR transistor and IR diode, then read by a ADC on a micro.
I could of used Lux etc but this way with a fixed distance or calibration each time I have a comparison, so in a strange way the turbidity is read in mV. the zero point being set by DI water or clear solvent.
I got them as free samples and wanted the UV part for doing UV chemistry at some point.
Originally I used a 32 bit micro as I had it to hand on a board, I switched it out for a pic so others could make one, I will post the hex file as while when I right it up, my version sits on top the phillip harris unit but could be used on its own as it has a LCD and serial output, I am adding a sd card for offline logging.
I only used the harris controller to save hastle with power supply etc and just soldered into the circuit to read the voltages, but the version I will post dosnt need the harris unit

[Edited on 25-12-2014 by Little_Ghost_again]