Cooking For Engineers

Noangel72 · Joined: 13 Mar 2012 Posts: 1

Hi,

I am building a DIY sous vide bath and am looking at submersible aquarium pumps to circulate water, as these are mostly rated at 33°C I'm wondering if they would break down fairly quickly in a 55°C bath and what other solution I could employee to circulate water.

Thanks.

RunDeep · Joined: 23 Apr 2012 Posts: 1 Location: Silicon Valley

Hi,
I am using this one:

http://www.ebay.com/itm/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=260688654282

It isn't self priming so the pump impeller needs to be in the water. I have a piece of tygon (reinforced poly) tubing on the inlet so I can take a suction on the far end of the tank with the pump on the heater end. I occasionally run up to around ~85°C range for fruit and veggies so I try to keep the top part of the pump out of the water (it is rated to 105°C). I just tiewrap it off to a PVC pipe frame that holds the heaters.

I started with this one:

http://www.lightobject.com/High-temperature100-39C-1LMin-mini-DC-Water-Pump-FDA-approval-Ideal-for-coffee-maker-or-other-food-process-application-P510.aspx

But, for probably no good reason, wanted one with more flow.

Good luck,
Eric

Neil Smith · Joined: 08 Jul 2012 Posts: 2

Don't use aquarium pumps. They're not up to the job. I melted enough of them finding that out.

I was using this pump in my home-made sous vide setup:

http://www.ebay.com/itm/DC-12V-Electric-Submersible-Water-Pump-95-GPH-P-38B-/250722722452?pt=LH_DefaultDomain_0&hash=item3a603d2294#ht_3344wt_1026

It's submersible, so I just mounted it below the project box, along side the heaters and thermocouple. (Unfortunately, the Russian heaters I bought from a dodgy Ukranian on eBay managed to rust through, so I bought a professionally-made Swiss model to replace it.)