Geothermal Pump Installed At Outdoor Shark Exhibit

The Estuarium of the Dauphin Island Sea Lab on the coast of Alabama is building an outdoor 6400 gallon tank for rays and sharks, to open this October. They're installing a geothermal pump as a heater/cooler, with the pump 120 feet down in the sand. The first story in the following link describes it. Senior Aquarist Brian Jones is a NANFA member. http://skimmer.disl....2/article6.html

I've often wondered if a smaller scale version of something similar to this would work for a large home aquarium? Say, maybe circulating water from an underground cistern through a heat exchanger that circulates tank water where the cistern water and tank water don't come in direct contact.
Very interesting. Thanks for posting.

I've often wondered if a smaller scale version of something similar to this would work for a large home aquarium? Say, maybe circulating water from an underground cistern through a heat exchanger that circulates tank water where the cistern water and tank water don't come in direct contact.
Very interesting. Thanks for posting.

One time I saw a post on here about running a tube of water from your tank out through the window (outside the house) then back in the window and back in the tank. It was an idea for a chiller. You could use it to emulate outdoors winter temperatures in the tank to condition fish for spawning in the spring.

I could imagine a peristaltic pump coming in handy for such an application. There's a gif on this page that shows how a peristaltic pump works: http://www.randolphaustin.com/ It basically squeezes the tube to push a fluid along without getting any of its own moving parts wet. We use them in medical research because not coming in contact with it means the fluid inside stays sterile. Anyway, that kind of pump would work well for your heat exchanger application. Or for cheap you could use a powerhead and some potable PVC pipe. That would be very affordable

Here's some heat transfer equations if you want to do some calculations for how big a diameter and how fast a flow rate you'll need to get the tank to a desired temperature given the temperature of a certain cistern: http://www.wlv.com/p...abook/ch1_2.pdf
If you want some help with those calculations just ask me. My group did a heat exchange estimate for a company for our senior capstone project in college.

Edited by EricaWieser, 19 July 2012 - 09:51 PM.