by Brian White
Contest! How high can you pump water with the little aquarium airlifter?
1:46 am in Education, energy consumption, environmental impact, Help the project by testing this, How-Tos, International, Materials and Resources by Brian White
I made another video and basically I ran out of pipe and ladder and because of that I couldn’t pump any higher but I am curious. How high can you go? I went 13 ft but there was no problem whatsoever pumping that high! So, maybe, if you have a 2 story house or an available high place you could find out how high it is possible to go? So the contest rules are in the picture below and in a video
(You might get some extra hints and ideas if you watch the video)
Basically you use your aquarium air pump, and a T joint set at 2 ft below your liquid reservoir height.
Contest rules for unbelievably high airlift powered by puny aquarium air pump
So the rest of the post is from a couple of days ago and has a little different version of the video. (I am too Lazy to write a new post)
I made a new video about the pulser pump and Eileen suggested that a “pulser pump nano” (a smaller version) might be useful. The pulser pump is my little “invention” from over 20 years ago. Anyway, I no longer live near a river so I cannot do a nano. But because of my involvement in windowfarms, I can at least test how high a tiny pulser pump can pump. Today I used the T-joint method and an extendable ladder to go pretty high. With an aquarium air pump and 22 inches of submergence, I pumped to 13 ft high today! I bet it can go a lot higher but thats it for me.
Here is the video (which may be of some use to windowfarmers)
Good Success!
How is it in a start/stop cycle like the 15m/1hr Windowfarm cycle? I had no problem starting my own to go about 4 ft with 18inches submergence, but when it went through the cycle the restart was frequently problematic. With my new set up I may have avoided it, but I’m just curious how it looks on your end.
Hi, Dan, if you use the T-joint method with a u bend in the pipe below the T-joint, I don’t think there is a problem. I measured the diameter of the tubing and it was 3/16 inch. The blue airline tubing did not work well. It was a little smaller and was hydrophobic. The water almost stuck to the silicone rubber and with 13 ft of this it did block a few times.
It stuck so well that even when you took it off the t joint, the water only slowly exited the blue silicone tube! Going down!
But with the clear plastic tubing there was no problem. Maybe with your tubes there was perfect liquid holdup?
Whatever tube you use, the plugs of water need to be able to slowly drip down the sides of the tube and past the air bubbles. This means a tiny bit of performance is lost but it also means that your airlift does not stall.
Hope this helps, Brian
I found I could improve the lift a little by adding a check valve just below the T on the water line. With no ‘push back’ from the air all the energy was upwards.
A Check valve is fine but there is a risk. There is always the risk of a bit too much water coming through and going up above the T. If your pump can pump 24 inches of water, and there are 26 inchex above the T, your pump will not be able to pump it and the check valve will not let it leak back.
(Maybe it does allow a little leak back and in that case it is probably fine)
This risk is very tiny but it is there. Another solution is to have a a small diameter pipe dilivering water leading up to the T.
If you use big pipes before the T the “push back” is an osolation or a too and fro of the water and that wastes energy.
I do think check valves allow you to use very low submergence which is useful in some situations.
Brian, is the entire tubing assemble air lines? I was having enough trouble finding the rigid tubing, and I could not find any tees for that size. If I am understanding your sketch correctly, I could do the entire uplift system with just air lines?
Hi, dilberta, it isn’t airlines. It is 1/4 inch or 3/16 tubing, and airlines are thinner than that. I found airlines to be too thin and they did not work well. I got the tubing in several hardware stores and joined what I had together to get the 13 ft. (I used little lengths of wider tubing as sleeves to join them together).
Brian
He Brian, has this contest actually continued?
The risk you mention when using a check valve doesn’t apply when your airpump can push up more water then the submergens of the T-joint
Contest is ongoing, T-joint size is whatever you want it to be but you have to keep the basic dimensions similar. 2 ft submergence, (not more), and the current “world record” is 16 ft higher. (by itsandbits1 on instructables.com).
Britta (on another thread) suggests that 10 times submergence is a “maximum” they have observed in windowfarms tests. BUT they have no intention of trying 25 ft because it is simply not necessary to any winowfarming operation (and money is tight and must be spent on solving legitimate problems).
However, if YOU want to be WORLD RECORD HOLDER in any competition in the world, this might be the easiest way EVER to get your name into HISTORY! Over 16 ft and you HAVE to do a youtube video. (itsandbits didn’t but gave enough details that I trust him.) However the video is necessary and it will help a wider audience appreciate the potential for this thing.
Thanks
Brian White
Brian, Thank you so much for posting this! I can finally pump nutrients to my 8 ft high windows with predictability! I will post some more information about my set-up in the next week or so. This little hobby of mine was starting to stress me out because I could not get the pump to consistently pump to that height. In my opinion, your set up was the simplest and most reliable I have tried thus far!