diy CO2
 

Been lurking for awhile, and thanks to much info from the group I've
got a nicely planted and healthy 30 gallon with 8 species of plants
running off a DIY CO2 injector.

What I've been wondering is, in principle I should be able to get 3x
the CO2 and much longer lived yeast cultures if I could run the CO2
setup aerobically, rather than fermentatively. Is anyone experimenting
with doing this?

Some technical barriers around how to get O2 into the CO2/yeast
container (if only we could use the CO2 that the plants were producing,
Lovelock would be so amused). Perhaps a simple air pump/airstone fed
into the CO2/yeast container with a one-way valve to maintain positive
pressure? Sure this would dilute the gas mixture that goes into the
tank, but could this be compensated for by e.g. using a more efficient
gas injection/dissolution setup on that end of the system?

Otherwise I'd be happy to hear about any advice on distilling the
ethanol out of my aged cultures... so long as I'm recovering my sugar
input one way or the other, I'll be happy :).

Thanks for any feedback or pointers.

diy CO2
 

jayr wrote:
What I've been wondering is, in principle I should be able to get 3x
the CO2 and much longer lived yeast cultures if I could run the CO2
setup aerobically, rather than fermentatively. Is anyone experimenting
with doing this?

I've thought about doing this. My concept was to run an air pump through
the fermenting cultures, putting everying through an airstone in the
tank - oxygen & CO2 in one!

The only drawback I can see is that the airstone would also act to
sparge the CO2 out of the water. Perhaps if you had a closed top on the
tank, and fed the air pump off of the tank headspace. (My guess is any
system would be leaky enough to keep an adaquate supply of oxygen in the
tank.)

Otherwise I'd be happy to hear about any advice on distilling the
ethanol out of my aged cultures... so long as I'm recovering my sugar
input one way or the other, I'll be happy :).

My advice is: "don't do it". Most jurisdictions have laws regulating the
distillation of consumable alcohol - if you don't have the appropriate
licenses, you face stiff fines and potential jail time. Rotgut vodka's
much cheaper.