Sodastream machines are very popular among people who like to make their own soda at home. However, replenishing these tiny gas tanks is expensive and wasteful. [Becky] decided to upgrade her machine to avoid this problem, and added some intelligence to her.
The simple part of the hacker is to use an adapter to connect the Sodastream device to a 50-pound carbon dioxide tank from a welding shop. It's very simple, just use an off-the-shelf adapter. Using welding-grade gas in drinking water may be a very bad idea, but [Becky] is willing to accept it.
However, due to the installation of a CO2 monitor to make [Becky] aware of any dangerous leaks, safety has been given due attention. The tank is also placed on a custom scale built with a load cell and ESP8266 to monitor the remaining gas volume. [Becky] pointed out that at the rate she drinks one bottle a day, the water tank should last about 7 years.
The project reduced the cost to 18 cents per liter of soda water, while the cost of Sodastream gas supply was 38 cents. Even with the use of food-safe carbon dioxide sources, Sodastream's price may be beaten. In addition, there is no need to buy new bottles regularly!
Overall, this is a great project that reminds us of the hacking of continuous ink printers. Video after the break.
Please, please, please don't store carbon dioxide cylinders in your house, no matter how much you trust your alarm.
The toxicity profile is very different from carbon monoxide, but a leak that goes undetected overnight may kill you. I am an anesthesiologist.
According to the safety data sheet, the pressure of the stock cylinder is 57.3 bar. They connected a 50-pound gas cylinder with a pressure of 124 bar and no regulator directly to the soda machine. I stared at my screen in fear.
Yes, but the screw-in cylinder used in the original equipment will almost certainly be filled to the extent that it has a two-phase system (liquid vapor), so its design pressure is the same. The fact that there is more liquid in a larger tank does not affect the pressure. In a two-phase gas/steam system, the pressure is only determined by the temperature. Google "Gibbs Stage Rules" for more information.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phase_rule#Pure_substances_(one_component)
CO2 leaks are easy to detect because you will feel a burning sensation when you breathe. Do you not consider nitrogen or carbon monoxide because they are silent killers?
Many people with aquariums also hide these large tanks in their aquarium cabinets. I have never heard of anyone having problems.
Which part of "I'm an anaesthetist" did you not understand? If you wake up in a room full of carbon dioxide (if you do), you will definitely not leave that room. You are in a death panic of absolute suffocation, and you don't know what happened. good luck. At a height of 2.5 meters, the recommended minimum room size with furniture is> 75 square meters, which can store 10 kg carbon dioxide cylinders.
Well, little chicken, every homebrew enthusiast in this country will definitely follow your advice about the collapse of carbon dioxide cylinders. Which course of your degree covers the safety mechanisms and certifications that each cylinder must go through before it is filled? not a single one? This explains why you spread fear.
(I receive hundreds of hours of training every year. In addition to my degree, license, and certification, safety and procedures are definitely more than what you receive in terms of home-brewing hobbies. Not to mention that the first article here is a certain So far, his understanding of the details of breathing various non-standard air gases is better than mine and yours. Really.)
You really? .. Frankly speaking, as a professional winemaker, I was knocked down by carbon dioxide. You go out, as if you are asleep, being picked up from the floor, watching people pass out in the cooler, all the pipelines are most likely to leak. Our alarm is set at 5000 ppm, which is much lower than the 8000 ppm on most pot farms. My 750-pound fuel tank leaked and it didn't even trigger the alarm. To keep CO2 at a low level, you need to keep it low because it will flow like water.
Now I recommend that most home users use a 5-pound fuel tank because of the high cost and easy replacement.
But your description is something I have never seen before working in the brewery for many years. By the way, cleaning our water tank can trigger an alarm of 5000 ppm
https://images.app.goo.gl/vMcZkdZFbjAW54FV9
Okay, this is new to me, but this is the second comment that mentions this, so obviously this is a thing. Why use carbon dioxide in the aquarium?
I don't have an aquarium, but I believe it is suitable for an aquarium with real plants. Plants like extra carbon dioxide.
CO2 does not cause a burning sensation. The effect depends on the concentration. Increased breathing rate, confusion, sedation, and then counter-intuitive breathing effort declines, breathing stops, and death. Are you thinking about other things? Look for CO2 anesthesia. I have seen it in my body many times (usually caused by drugs).
Sudden exposure to high concentrations of carbon dioxide will basically suffocate your cough, and it is almost impossible to take a breath. Have been and have done it.
Any cold and dry gas can cause a cough. When any gas expands rapidly, it cools down. If I give you 100% cold, dry oxygen fast enough, you will get some respiratory irritation. For this reason, we humidify and heat all high-concentration gases given to patients. There are also pollutants (hydrocarbons) in the cylinder, which may cause irritation,
CO2 is not a direct irritant at room temperature and normal humidity.
There are some suggestions that it may be a direct nasal irritation (causing pain) for awake subjects exposed to transient high concentrations. However, based on my other comments, these subjects were directly exposed to carbon dioxide from a cold and dry cylinder.
What I experienced was perfect room temperature.
The key is to see if you replace helium with carbon dioxide in a party balloon and inhale it, if your voice becomes lower instead of higher. No one can breathe in carbon dioxide, because it makes people cough and nausea immediately.
I believe this is because when you place a very high concentration of carbon dioxide around the mucous membranes, enough carbon dioxide will dissolve into the water there, thereby drastically lowering the pH value and causing irritation. Having said that, I believe the anesthesiologist will know what effect the leaking water tank in your room will have.
Carbon dioxide is not as dangerous as carbon monoxide—not even close. Humans cannot detect carbon monoxide, it will only silently poison you, but we are *very* good at detecting excessive carbon dioxide. Just hold your breath. After about a minute, you feel that the discomfort of "I must breathe immediately" comes from the accumulation of carbon dioxide in the blood.
Chimney sweep told me different stories. Once you enter a room full of carbon dioxide, you cannot get out. You just need to pull down and this is for you
If you manage to inhale. I have experienced breathing pure carbon dioxide, it will not immediately make you unconscious-for a while you start to "fuzzy", if you leave immediately, you can still leave the room. However, this is a terrible and painful experience, and most people panic and cannot get out.
Welding carbon dioxide is no different from carbon dioxide distributing soda or beer in 99% of the cases. Unfortunately, I see this error message printed here.
And, what is in the bottle you get the other 1% of the time? If it is toxic, I think 1% is a very bad risk.
The welding gas is 100% the same as any other carbon dioxide. The CO2 bottle has a dedicated valve for CO2, so there is no cross-contamination. The filling plant does not distinguish between welding and food.
I work as a welder maintenance technician in a building shared with the filling plant.
Um, no—it's not.
Yes. Only one huge Dewar can fill all bottles. The 5-pound bottle on your hip flask is next to the 50-pound bottle that goes to the welding shop.
The bottle is evacuated with a vacuum pump and then refilled.
The CO2 comes from the same CO2 factory as food grade CO2. They have no different levels at the source, they are all the same. The difference between food grade and non-delivery is only the tank used to hold the gas. There may be anything in that 50-pound welding tank, so the gas is still carbon dioxide, but you may mix some oil or some other garbage in it, or you may not. No one checked.
I did some research on this, they may use the same pump, and in most cases the same thing, but it doesn’t have to be, because the pump can use other greases and oils that you don’t use, and there are food-grade things.
Yes, just like industrial oxygen is indistinguishable from medical oxygen 99% of the time. But that might be bad. Some recent deaths of patients with new coronary pneumonia in Bosnia and Herzegovina are related to industrial oxygen therapy. https://www.euractiv.com/section/politics/short_news/protesters-go-against-dodik-after-covid-19-patients-treatment-with-industrial-oxygen/ Do not mix food and industrial gases.
The gas comes from the same liquid oxygen dewar on site. The only difference is that there is a purity monitor on the O2 filling station to ensure that you get pure oxygen.
This may be the difference between the United States and the European Union. If you look at Messer’s German web pages, you will find different data sheets for industrial, food and medical gases.
I am a little skeptical. The medical bottle is guaranteed to be used only for oxygen. The smaller one also has a special ring-type quick connection. But oxygen is oxygen, and those who stand up to get industrial oxygen don't know what they are talking about. Oxygen is "made" from distilled air.
Because one is certified (ie, they are criminally responsible for it) and the other is not. Oxygen is also a bad example because it tends to quickly oxidize any pollutants
I think in Germany, you are not even allowed to sell gasoline in bottles of the wrong color. There are some rules about the minimum pressure that the bottles can withstand. When I was a nurse in Germany, we were not allowed to completely empty the water tanks because they would have a positive pressure. If we happen to empty a water tank completely, it must be cleaned and disinfected, which is very expensive.
Where I left, carbon dioxide fire extinguishers were also a good source of cheap carbon dioxide. In addition, if you buy a lot of units, the seller will lower the price: one is near my 3D printer, the other is in my car, and the last is in my beer tap ;)
It took several years to fill and test the fire extinguisher. Be sure to let them know that it needs to be food grade. We can use the cold tank provided by the supplier, but we also try our best to recover most of the carbon dioxide in the tank we emptied. Over time, the gas leaked during the connection will give off the smell of death, and it has been mixed into our reuse bank.
Yes, but sometimes this gas will leave a metal-like smell in your soda. It can usually be solved by cleaning the fuel tank and transferring to a different charging station. At least in my country, Drago has been using the same gas to sell fire extinguishers and soda for the past 50 years.
If you don't want to take the risk of poisoning your family, this absolutely requires a short and hard pipe connection with an automatic shut-off valve under the control of some appropriate safety system. Using so much carbon dioxide in the country is a very bad idea.
This situation often occurs in aquarium hobbies. I have a 10 kg fuel tank because the larger fuel tank can’t fit in my cabinet, but I know someone is hiding one or more B50s in the closet in the living room or bedroom. I have never heard of any accident. If it leaks seriously, you will hear it, and it will burn when you breathe, so you won't be surprised in your sleep.
It's nice not to throw things away, but soda is less than 18 cents per liter from the store. Not that we often buy. When my daughter was 4 years old, she went through a stage where she liked sparkling water.
As for the comparison of welding gas and food grade-a bit of speculation, but it may be slightly contaminated by process gas extracted from it or oil from non-food grade compressors.
18 cents is the cost of running the original sodastream (11 Euros/60 liters), but it is certain that running from a 10 kg beer cylinder is more likely to be 5 carats
No, 18 cents is the cost after hacking. 38 cents is the standard cost. From the article:
"The project reduced the cost to 18 cents per liter of soda water, while the Sodastream gas supply cost was 38 cents."
38 cents is not a "standard cost". The common cost of replacing Sodastream tanks is about 10-15 Euros, which is equivalent to 16-25 cents per liter. Non-brand replacement cans are cheaper.
I agree with that. I bought SodaStream brand cylinders from Target (trade-in net) for $15-16.
They connect industrial-grade gas cylinders to food-grade items, and haven't even thought about using filters? That's crazy.
The inlet of soda water requires a full bottle of pressure, up to 700 bar. An affordable online carbon filter is very important.
Generally, the nut and tail connected to the bottle have a built-in sintered particle filter.
A 5 lb CO2 bottle for home brewing/barreling equipment may be a better choice: 1) You can own them directly without paying any ongoing bottle rental fees 2) The replenishment cost is pretty good, not more than a 50 lb bottle and The difference is offset by the rental cost. Both are much better than the cost of soda. 3) The smaller the volume, the less likely it is to cause injury to you in the event of a leak. There is simply not enough capacity to fill a house.
Yes, but every 5 years or so, you must recertify it through a static pressure inspection. Suppliers will refuse to fill expired tanks.
It sounds like she was cheated by her carbon dioxide. In Sweden, you can refill the Sodastream bottle for 20 kronor ($2.32). It is said that this is good for 60 liters, less than 4c/liter.
The added benefit is that you are not responsible for the maintenance of the cylinder. If something goes wrong, you will lose a few dollars.
The selling price in German stores is about 5-6 Euros/60 liters per bottle. Reduced to 4 Euros/60 liters, free shipping and return shipping charges.
Wow so cheap! – The cheapest I found in Denmark is 69 crowns (10.77 USD)
Before rising natural gas prices led to a shortage of carbon dioxide, the UK sold a bottle of £7. The wholesale price of natural gas has risen by 4 million times, and the company that produces a large amount of British carbon dioxide as a by-product of ammonia fertilizer sold its contracted natural gas back to the market at a higher profit than the operating plant. Then the plant was closed.
So the UK ran out of carbon dioxide last month, and it is also used to package food to extend their life... Ironically, the brewery (!) makes the beer foam.
The brewery uses carbon dioxide because the beer is microfiltered to remove yeast, so it does not produce carbonates in the bottle/barrel (and therefore explode). Larger breweries capture and reuse the carbon dioxide produced during the fermentation process, while smaller breweries will not, because equipment costs more than simply buying bottling equipment.
Astonishing! We finish drinking a small bottle in a week, and I often think of doing something similar, but I'm not sure if my wife wants to make a hole in the kitchen countertop, or put a big bottle there... :)
Are they directly connected to the cylinder without a pressure regulator? I'm "just" a lab monkey, but it makes me shudder.
The carbon dioxide supplier of the restaurant is also the place where the welding gas is supplied. A 50-pound fuel tank costs approximately $45. It can last about a month on the Coke machine.
The Sodastream bottle is a piece of cake supplemented with dry ice. It can be obtained in pellet form from a friendly local industrial gas supplier. There seems to be no specific warning, MSDS states that "CO2 gas is not flammable, has no smell or taste. It is non-toxic and approved as a food additive." (https://static.prd.echannel.linde.com/wcsstore/AU_BOC_Industrial_Store/pdf /product/en_AU/Safety Advice-Handling and usage of dry ice BOC.pdf) I have six empty ones to fill up a day. Thought they might make a useful energy fur summit sumfing or ova link to the method... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2qSwLIXKTHs
Not drinking soda can save more money and also save dental expenses! But, seriously, neat. I'm very excited when the device requires tiny refills that are an order of magnitude more expensive than bulk.
Oh... you mean like... Printer cartridge? 😄
Hmm...For decades, home brewers have been using carbon dioxide from a local welding supply store to carbonate their home brews and things such as root beer or other flavored sodas. You don't even need Sodastream.
I know it will not make such an interesting video, but the simpler solution is to buy an adapter to refill the official gas cylinder from the large CO2 tank. This way you don't have to keep the water tank at home.
SodaStream and other similar carbonation systems are not a good choice.
If you want to buy a CGA320 bottle anyway, it is best to buy regulators and hoses, ball lock attachments and carbonated caps. You can buy cheap plastic carbonated caps from KegLand, which now work well, or stainless steel springs. Not only can you carbonate any beverage you want, including things that are not recommended in SodaStream, you can also dial the pressure you want to carbonate. If you want to upgrade to a keg, it can also provide you with almost everything you need. It is also quite easy to use a small bucket to make a continuous soda water system, so you don't have to make one bottle at a time, or even fill up one bucket at a time.
Yes, all compressed gas cylinders have safety issues. Do your own due diligence there. Of course you don’t need a 50-pound household use, but a versatile standard carbon dioxide tank and accessories are more expensive than proprietary, expensive carbonation The system is much better.
I just bought an adapter and a paintball can, so they all fit the existing Sodastream station. I don’t use it every day, but it’s good to drink soda on demand.
All in all, I am surprised that Sodastream's fare increase rate is only 100%. (US$0.18/liter vs. US$0.38/liter).
A 5-pound or 10-pound cylinder may be more suitable for home use, and more suitable for smaller kitchens.
I miss my little hip flask, not just for the beer brewed at home. I used to fill a small bucket with water, sometimes adding some lemons or limes. delicious.
Yes, I believe they will want to enter the possible pharmaceutical industry @00.
good idea! If you want to capture carbon dioxide from the air and use it for carbon neutralization, then in this day and age, this would be a good idea.
Someone should tell BigClive about this. He can carbonize everything!
We started with the sodastream crystal machine with beautiful glass bottles, and I was looking for a way to refill the 425g can by myself. I need a carbon dioxide bottle with a lower rod to squeeze liquid carbon dioxide out of the tank, and a special refill adapter suitable for soda water flow, with a small pressure relief opening
The 10 kg bottle originally cost me 140 euros plus 35 euros for the adapter, and we have 3 empty soda water cylinders to recycle. They need to be cooled in the refrigerator to fully utilize their capacity when refilling them.
We started this in the winter of 2016, and now we have an aarke carbonizer, which fits my design niche perfectly, and can still add carbon dioxide from the big tank...according to the tracking I’m doing, we’re in retail soda Saved more than 400 euros, and compared to other manufacturers at a competitive price. Only by purchasing large quantities of 10 kg cans of carbon dioxide, we also drank a lot of soda in Germany
I opened the cylinder and put 400 grams of dry ice in it, which worked well.
Using this huge cylinder makes me feel unsafe. I have two kegerators with 5 pound cylinders for several months. The 5-pound cans of the "welding" shop are sold as "beer" gas, whatever that means. My store does not sell "medical" oxygen, only "welding" oxygen.
By the way, some gas stores also sell the "nitro beer gas" of beer like Guinness, which is a mixture that contains a lot of nitrogen and carbon dioxide.
Finally give up this, because I can only say that this is a big mistake. There are a few knowledgeable, but many WTFs in this review set?
The first sub-theme initiated by Clark: Why are people arguing here? Taking a puff from the water tank (dry, cold, etc.) is not the same as the decrease in O2 caused by leakage over time. At about 5%, you start to become very fuzzy. You may never feel the accumulation, when you hit 10%, you are in the damaged area. There is a lot of literature on this. Please refer to: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5380556/ This is one of the many gases that I need professional attention to. I have no reason to disagree with Dr. Clark’s point of view, nor should you. A reasonable question is: Given the size of the bottle, how to ensure that there will not be enough accumulation in the event of a leak becomes a problem.
Chris and macona: The lack of clues in this sub-thread is really special. O2's sidelines give a group of people a chance to become ignorant. The difference between the various O2 types is the bottle design and filling method to meet the appropriate requirements (this is for gas-liquid processes, where filling is by evaporation of almost pure liquid O2.) For welding and cutting, O2 needs to be much higher than 99.5%, but not necessarily 99.999% research level. The bottle is as clean as possible, because any contamination in the essentially pure O2 under pressure will cause unpleasantness, but unless there is a reason, the bottle will not be purged, so there may be trace impurities that have no effect on industrial use, but in medical use May be harmful. USP (medical) oxygen cylinders need to be vacuum purged before filling. Although the required purity is only 99.5%, as long as the non-O2 components are harmless (I don’t have a complete standard on hand, but I think N2, argon and other inerts Matter is not a problem. CO2 is not sure here). O2 from the concentrator is a different beast, and its purity may be much lower. Aviation O2 (think military pilots, commercial, non-pressurized cabin cockpit supplies, etc. Passenger masks use chemical generators) have additional requirements for moisture (dry. Completely dry. The dew point must be below -65C (-85F) )) to prevent the piping and regulator from freezing. Medical treatment is not a real problem.
Due to different requirements in the specification, SDS may be different. This includes the butt. Step out of the medical field, you no longer have to worry about some problems. Use the second source when your plant is on fire and you will be overwritten (multiple times from the client). and many more. However, unless the conditions are special...
There are many more, but this is the point. The same O2 from the same source, but with different requirements, handling (such as vacuum purging and dehydration), absolute purity and testing.
As for the initial concern about using large carbon dioxide bottles: it might be okay. The supplier I use ships the same bottles from the same inventory for beverage service and welding gas. I want them to be recorded and processed correctly to detect and prevent contamination, but I don't care much about this because my application is welding. But it is the same gas, the same inventory. The actual requirements may be slightly different (99.90% for general industry, 99.95% for USP, 99.999 for research, if I remember correctly), but in fact, it is cheaper to make every bottle comply with USP. Inventory control and paperwork are not cheap. Sending inappropriate products does not take any responsibility.
I have a shelf full of all these requirements, although these days, I rarely look at the paper version because most of them are just Google. Some of the people here should give it a try at some point.
Incidental items: It is worth knowing where the boundaries of standards, regulations, and costs lie. It can save your ass in a pinch
Fizz is fun, but carbonated drinks, even low-calorie ones, are associated with a shorter lifespan. In any case, if this offends you, please do not abuse me, just conduct your own research and decide for yourself whether the epidemiological research results are relevant to you.
Uh, no. You can't make an unsubstantiated statement ("related to") and then count on me to "do my own research". You are the person who made the claim, so if you don't have any support, STFU. Do you want to know what offended me? The person who made the claim then hoped that I would prove it for them. You even mentioned the "results of epidemiological studies", implying that there is such a thing, but again, it is absolutely not provided. Why are you making this comment?
SodaStream and others want to sell you flavoring agents, some will add their own flavoring agents, but many of us only drink carbonated water. Of course, you are not implying that this is related to a shorter lifespan.
This is a cool project. You can also purchase an adapter to refill the soda can with a siphonic carbon dioxide can. I believe the new one needs a pressure relief pin to open the valve and allow filling. It is safer because you can store the CO2 storage tank outside the house, but it does not have the "cool factor" to indicate that you have a 50-pound CO2 storage tank in your kitchen.
You can be even cooler and order the Drago Siphon kit from Argentina and own a cult item! They were manufactured in 1965 and are still in use 20 years after the company stopped manufacturing.
I was surprised when he told her to open the water tank valve all the way. I have been told to never open any pressurized tank, whether it is a welding tank or a propane grill tank for more than half a circle. In this way, if there are any problems, you can quickly close the water tank.
It depends on the valve type. The acetylene valve is only sealed by the stem packing. This is why they are so tight, but when opened only 1/2 turn it allows for a complete seal. They are also designed for the full rated flow at this opening. Driving too far has two potential problems: it is difficult to close in an emergency and the valve stem is worn and the packing is damaged. In many factories, it is standard practice to perform a bubble test on the C2H2 valve stem when a new bottle is loaded and opened for the first time, because it is common for the valve stem packing to be slightly tightened due to wear or excessive opening. Gas station personnel should check, but may miss one (or in some cases just don’t bother)
High-pressure inert gas valves and some more modern gas valves (for example, the modern handwheel type used for B-type or large C2H2) have an end seat under the valve cover, which needs to be fully opened to prevent leakage through the valve stem. The stem seal may be just an O-ring (moving and therefore unsupported) and will leak under high pressure because the packing is tight enough to prevent it from making the valve very difficult to operate. Even if it is not opened, C2H2 may not leak because the pressure is low enough and the O-ring may leak, but please consult the valve manufacturer.
Generally, if there is a handwheel, there is no leakage when fully opened (but check carefully with acetylene to make sure)
Once you leave the general industrial field (such as medical oxygen valves), you need to understand the specific valve type to function properly.
If you only open the grilling pot 1/2 turn, this may be the reason why the heating takes a long time. The jar I bought here is marked "OPD valve". Fully open". Partially open will restrict flow and even the burner may go out.
For example, see the Sherwood catalog for cutaways and instructions.
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