I am a researcher in environmental chemistry and wastewater based surveillance. I am thinking of building a sampler that can run wastewater through a sorbent that can extract biologicals/viruses etc.
Came across Blue Robotics and their product and was wondering if i could use the cylinders they sell. They have the wet link penetrators, which normally have electrical wires run through, my idea was to run hollow tubing through them so water can enter via one way and go out the other. inside the unit will be a pump, batteries and the sorbent material. See below my “really bad” schematics haha.
Something like this has been done before! The main question is - how deep does the enclosure need to be (what is the external pressure?) If you’re not going too deep, you can drill out the appropriately sized Penetrator Bolt to eliminate the cable step, and run your tubing through it.
The more rigid the tubing is, the better the WetLink Penetrator seal can compress against it. The better the compression, the higher the pressure in the sealing material, which drives the depth at which external pressure overcomes it and a leak occurs.
Too squishy a tube and you won’t be able to submerge to very deep without a leak occuring, and generally extreme depths (>60-100m)) may have issues with the tubing “extruding” as there is no “step” in the tubing to prevent this motion like the jacked of a cable creates.
I’m not sure what you mean by lids? I was simply talking about how to use the WetLink Penetrator to route tubing from outside to inside an enclosure. This means you need an enclosure with M10 holes, like the Blue Robotics cylindrical locking enclosure series or water-tight box.
Any internal joint between tubing types will need to be sufficiently type to withstand the pressure differential across it - but as you’re only going a few meters, that shouldn’t be much of an issue!
