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Ozone treating exhaust air on the cheap

foaf

Active member
Veteran
So the air you vent out of your grow stinks. If that is a problem, you can either put a carbon filter in the circuit to scrub the air that is exhausted or you can highly ozonate the air before it exhausts. Just ozonating the grow room doesn't work because the amount of ozone needed to clean up cheese weed and such is unsafe and hard to regulate and bleaches everything in the room and degrades plastics.

You can put a large ozone generator in the ductwork and that works, but it is expensive and cumbersome.



http://www.uvonair.com/cd-800.html and it's fucking $400 or more.

You can buy replacement parts for some of the new solid state ozone generators that use ceramic plates to generate the ozone, you can easily build a very robust duct sanitizer for $40. They come in bigger sizes and you could also put more than one for really large high flow ducting too.

replacement transformer and 3.5 gram/hour ceramic plate



http://www.ebay.ca/itm/3-5g-h-Ceram...006?pt=LH_DefaultDomain_0&hash=item337f93b65e

This transformer and plate costs $40 free shipping. It makes 3x the ozone of the 8 inch inline $400 Uvonair unit referenced above.

I have mine shown here rigged in the intake of a vented hood that also helps vent the space to outside. I haven't had it long so I'll report back after this grow with any issues, but for now it is working great, you can smell some ozone outside down the walk some but it is totally not suspicious. I have two vents in the room and the other is on a Can filter, but if this works, its cheaper and takes up less room, and doesn't add any resistance to the circuit.

You do have to solder the leads and install it in a way that you are comfortable with, this cheap unit would normally be used to repair a large non duct type unit that had insulated mounts and a case and fan, and cords and switches and timers and such, so you have to do any of that that you want just DIY



 

City Twin

Member
Long time O3 user here.

I'm a little suspicious of Chinese output claims, but that said, be sure to check the plate regularly for grunge build up.

That's all the maintenance there is.
 

ChaosCatalunya

5.2 club is now 8.1 club...
Veteran
Some O3 setups generate acid discharge that can eat your ducting, iirc there are specialist O3 generators for ducts, so take care.

Also worth remembering that O3 works properly, when mixed well, the best setups seem to run baffle rooms/boxes at the end... and that O3 does not play nicely with Carbon Filters, put them downstream of Activated Carbon, not upstream.
 

foomar

Luddite
ICMag Donor
Veteran
Thats a neat cheap DIY way of getting a usefull output , should be more reliable than the old type.


The output of all these chinese units is very optimistic , and could only be achieved useing bone dry air passed through an oxygen concentrator , or fed from an oxygen cylinder.

They all give brown staining and corrosion from nitric acid side reactions with moist air , have seen galvanised ducting rotted away in factories like swiss cheese , with process fumes less humid than a grow room exhaust.



you can smell some ozone outside down the walk some but it is totally not suspicious.

The slightest whiff of unexplained ozone would be unusual and suspicious to me , it is not a common smell apart from arcing/failing electrical kit and HV gear.
 

D350

Member
I know this is an old thread, but nevertheless.
I did what the foaf suggested, bought a chinese "replacement" ozoner for 22usd from ebay. (says 5g per hour...:p )
Got a ceramic plate and transformer, basically the same as the one above.
Made a cut in my exhaust PVC pipe, slide the plate in, seal, mount the transformer near and voila, saved a lot of money! I have around 15m of exhaust pipes, so this should be enough to mix ozone and smell long enough...
Went for the ozone, as my filters were clogging all the time, were expensive and it still smelled around my house last couple of weeks...
Observations:
-my SS grow is not stinky too much now, so so far O3 kills all the smell. Using 800m3/h fan.
- I'm terrified of leaks in the tube, could kill my grow and me...
- i hope my fan does not die and o3 gets in my grow
-I wonder how long will this plate work, before it gets eaten away...

Is PVC resistant to acid, that is produced...? Hmmm
 

foomar

Luddite
ICMag Donor
Veteran
PVC should be fine but it may become brittle over time , should not be an issue with that amount of airflow.
 

D350

Member
Just an update from my setup (see my post up):
Ozoner still works, but not sure, if gives the same output, as the first day...
My Ss is rieking now and it can not cover/neutralize smell any more. Ordered one more plate.
Maybe I'll have to make my tubes longer/bigger, to give it time to neutralize...
Now you can smell both, ozone and my stinky buds...
 

foomar

Luddite
ICMag Donor
Veteran
The lifespan of most of these chinese plates is quoted as 3000 to 4000 hours , careful cleaning may restore some of the original output.
 

foaf

Active member
Veteran
my update...
I got two full grows out of it. My second grow was a stinky cheese type and some smell got past the ozone plate, but I put an extension 6" flexible metal duct on the intake end of the air cooled hood, made it about 3 feet and then put the plate there so that there would be about 3 feet more of mixing and reaction space, and that worked well.

I did have to clean the plate between grows, soaked in alcohol.

It now looks baked and doesn't work well so I got another plate for it for next grow.

All in all successful and still cheaper and less cumbersome than carbon filters, which I have always used and liked.
 

D350

Member
Another update from me:
This is becoming one of the best discoveries ever! :)
Today I removed my plate, cleaned it and put one more inside tube (2 sets now), as my SS and GD are really stinking. This is smell was impossible to remove with carbon filters before, total of more than 50pcs of plants!
But two of these cheap ozoners did the trick! Even if I change the plate(s) every month, I'm still saving a lot of money! Just need to take precaution.

Any knows any cheam o3 detectors?

Thanks
 
P

Pinnate

Growing tropical sativa sure solves my odour problem...cat's piss smells aren't a problem when you and your neighbours have cats...

Never really liked the pungency of Indica, anyway...
 
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