Mufflers vs. carbon filters

[DangerP]

I'm looking to reduce the sound and smell from my cabinet exhaust. What I'm wondering is, will a carbon filter also reduce the sound of the exhaust, and if not, how can you both reduce smell and sound with a single item?

My first grows were low odor and I was circulating air with some high-speed pc fans. This time, though, I'm growing a pretty pungent strain and air cooling my light, so there's a lot more air.

 

[clowntown]

Yes.

But it depends on the placement of your fan (and the type of fan) and length of ducting between certain points (like from fan to open end of ducting). I'm assuming you're going to run with something like an inline centrifugal, from reading this:

My first grows were low odor and I was circulating air with some high-speed pc fans. This time, though, I'm growing a pretty pungent strain and air cooling my light, so there's a lot more air.

There are other things you can do to reduce noise, like using smooth bored ducting where possible (instead of the flexible "dryer hose"), insulated ducting, less bends / angles, less distance, no reducer, mounting the fan on bungees, and adding an inline muffler.

I use both, like this:

scrubber -> reflector -> inline centrifugal @ lowest speed -> inline duct muffler

I tried once like:

reflector -> fan -> scrubber

and

reflector -> fan -> muffler

... but there was still a good amount of noise from the intake side! A lot of "WHOOOOSH"ing from the air rushing into the 6" intake of my reflector. Adding the inline duct muffler to the intake side wouldn't solve this problem, either; at best it might help reduce the noise from the fan a little.

Another way might be to attach the scrubber directly to the fan, then duct into the reflector, and a smooth bored duct exhaust might work w/o muffler. That would take care of some of the intake noise, and now all you need to take care of is the air turbulence noise.

 

[DangerP]

My fan's pretty quiet - you were right, I'm running an inline Vortex 4" fan. The ducting is pretty simple, intake over the bulb, then through a big slow curve, through the fan, and then a straight shot to the outside. As it is it's pretty quiet except for the exhaust noise, although I'm sure once I have that licked there'll be a new noise.

I think that in the interest of keeping my ducting simple (it's in a small space), I'm going to try just putting a carbon filter at the exhaust end.

 

[clowntown]

If the noise is at the exhaust end only, then a carbon scrubber there would fix it right up.