Category Archives: Air regulation

Progress on the Aeryn module

Building out the new paludarium follows two “golden” rules: 1) No tech inside 2) create everything in a modular fashion. Following these rules I came up with the Aeryn module. This module is in charge of one of the most important things for the land portion of a paludarium: Conditioning the air.

Requirements for the Aeryn Module

The Aeryn module should be able to utilize the surrounding air (my living room) and convert that into “jungle-compatible” air. In the early stages of building paludariums I quickly discovered that airflow is the number one factor to influence humidity. Heating the air used to be done by heating the water mass, and the air would more or less follow that temperature. Adding a mistmaker inside the setup would allow for quickly rising the humidity.

In the new setup I wanted to pack all of this (and more) into a single replaceable module: The Aeryn module. These are the requirements I set:

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The Aeryn module: Palu Air Conditioning

The Aeryn module was designed to allow air to be taken into the paludarium, heated and/or moisturized (mist) before it enters the setup. This is all part of the idea to have “no tech inside” but rather outside for easier access, maintenance and replace with updated versions.

What is Aeryn

Remember the sci-fi series “Farscape”? I originally designed this module named the Aether module. In honor of Farscape I renamed this module to Aeryn 🙂

The Aeryn module is a box-shaped module approximately 60x15x13cm in size, and is inserted into the hood above the paludarium. It lines up with two 12cm holes in the ceiling, where two fans draw in air from the outside. On the end of the module a 40mm pipe leads to the meshed strip on top of the paludarium where the conditioned air gets inserted.

Aeryn section 1: the air intake

The first section of the Aeryn module contains two 120mm fans, RPM regulated (and RPM measured back). These fans are put on top of the module, blowing down into the module. So first the airflow needs to be guided to flow sideways, which is accomplished using a 3D printed guide as shown below:

First section: After the air is pushed in from the top using two 120mm fans, this 3D printed guide directs the air to the left, on to the next sections of the Aeryn module.
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