Is this a terrible idea for making carbon nanotubes? Compressed air advice needed.
I’m trying to recreate the experiment from this paper. In it, they use very small flow rates of different gases, the smallest being 2.5sccm and the largest 287.5sccm. Regulators capable of producing such small, and precise air flows are quite expensive, and I’d need one per gas (4 total), so I’m trying to think of a different cheaper technique.
My idea is to use multiple scuba tanks each with a different gas to fill another scuba tank with the proper mixture, and enough volume for the experiments lifetime (30,800cc). You can only fill another tank this way to the psi of the regulator you use, but since I don’t need much volume, using a large tank with a standard 120psi reg feeding it is enough (pretty sure). This way I only need one time controlled electronic regulator, which would fill the mix tank for a specific time period based on the gas ratios I want the final mixture to contain.
I’ll also need an accurate (probably digital) air pressure gauge for the mix tank, so I can be confident in the final gas ratios.
But my background is in bio and comp sci, so I’m not well versed with compressed air systems.
Could this work, or am I missing something?
Posted Sep 11, 2025, 4:51 PM UTC