Building an Inline Mineralizer?

[WesP]

I've been doing a lot of research into adjusting the water chemistry for the different kinds of beers. So I've got an idea for a cool way to adjust the water as its going to your mash and sparge water.

What if you built a series of custom inline water filters packed with each of the following chemicals:

Gypsum
Calcium Chloride
Epsom Salt
Slaked Lime
Baking Soda
Chalk

Each inline filter would have a valve and psi gauge that mixes into the main water supply going to your pots. From there you test the water concentration for a chemical at various psi intervals. That should allow you to come up with something like "every X PSI, the PPM will go up by Y".

So for any beer, you simply go to your filters and adjust a series of valves for the perfect water make up. This is assuming you know your baseline water makeup.

It's overkill I know, but would this actually work?

 

[audger]

the only way to do it without flow meters on each line, would be to have a very constant supply pressure coming from your RO water tank. then you have a simple solenoid for each of the parrallel 'filters', and you calculate how much PPM of each mineral you get per minute that the solenoid is open, and activate each one individually for the prescribed amount of time. one single flow meter on the input or output to measure total volume would be helpful. flow meters are expensive though.

even then, if you only have 10 total gallons of mash water to work with, you have to divide that total volume up between the 6 'filters' (the same water couldnt travel thru multiple 'filters' without some overly complicated plumbing). if it took 8 gallons of water to get the proper PPM of calcium, you only have 2 more gallons to run thru the other 'filter's to get your mineral concentration for the others.

it could work, but would need some testing to determine that. then you would need to design some 'filter' cartridges that output a known, and linear, amount of each mineral, per volume of water, over the 'filters' lifetime. otherwise you would need to calibrate it at each use and test the water for each mineral every time.

would be a neat college engineering project.

 

[WesP]

This sounds more like an arduino project which would be fun as well. I found a flow meter recommended in the arduino forums which costs $9.95 and is compatible with the micro-controller. It doesn't have to be perfect. It could be 10% off and it would still be within acceptable ranges.

I would use rather large inline filters that would saturate the water going through it. It would have several times more mineral that would be needed. That way if you run low, the solution would still be saturated.

The design would be more like a pre-mix system injecting required amounts of mineral into the main water line going out to the pots. I don't think you would need much of a fully saturated solution to make up the levels required for beer.