Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

Aloha Friends,

As a Noob, I have to start this new thread by apologizing to the Posting Gods. I DID spend an hour reading and rereading all the sustainable threads before concluding this could be a separate, interesting and fruitful topic. I know more than a little about it as I am in the middle of building one now, having designed and built electric wind turbines before for marine applications.

We have a fairly big blower installation that uses a LOT of electricity each month, because we are a commercial operation: four blowers (2 Sweetwater S-31's and 2-S-41's) on a common 3" PVC manifold. All have check valves on them. At the far end of the manifold is a 4" stub-out for the wind-powered blower we have designed and are building now.

This wind-powered machine has a 3-bladed 18-foot diameter prop and design output is equivalent to about 10 kW worth of electrically-powered blowers at 12 knots wind speed after which output is constant to 30 knots. When we have it online it will allow us to do a lot more aquaculture and ponics because one of our biggest costs is electricity. Farm runs about $1,000/month electricity with blowers, pumps, ice machine and fridges for produce cooling. The blowers are about 70% of the farms electrical usage, so they were the obvious pinch point to attack in an alternate energy strategy.

Is anyone interested in following this, or do any of you have experience in wind-powered blowers? I have seen the little puny ones that Sweetwater and a couple of others sell, that run one or two CFM in 40". This machine will run 240 CFM in 40" at max output. I have a proprietary design that is patent pending, so I can't disclose detailed technical info until after the patent is concluded, sorry. But I can talk about it in general terms, and if you're making one, I can tell you if you're on the right track or repeating mistakes that someone else made earlier and possibly steer you to information on better design practice.

Will be more than just myself interested in this topic Tropic... thanks

By all means. Keep it comming. I'm interested. Could do the world a load of good in areas that have no power.

If the motor on my blower ever craped out I was going toss the motor and fix the rest to a wind turbine on top of the pole in the back yard. Might have to gear it a little. And then run it as a backup.

Sounds very interesting TB, however I'm certain my local city council would balk at an 18' blade spinning above my house



Whilst you going on this alternate energy hunt, check out this icemaking thread: [url="http://www.backyardaquaponics.com/forum/viewtopic.php?&t=1934"]Solar Ice[/url] first get rid of your blowers, then your freezers. :-)

I can't wait to hear more.

Aloha KudaPucat and other friends:

I know about the 18' blade; fortunately our city council allows us any wind turbine up to 50' in height without requiring special permits and so on, all we need to do is get a building permit for the foundation pour. HOWEVER, this is a MONSTER machine. It will run about 240 cfm max @40" H2O, and probably have an average output of 140-180 cfm, which would power 280+ Aquatic EcoSystems AS15S airstones at 0.5 cfm/minute.

We have two smaller machines and a larger one planned, based mostly on off-the-shelf parts plus some welding and fabricating. If I had this machine we're developing now, I could put in some big cheap tanks and grow a lot of fish economically using aquaponics as a biofilter. One of my biggest consumable expenses is the electricity to produce air. But, we've got lots of wind on the coast where we're located so we've proceeding on the wind-powered mill project in between building new aquaponics systems and growing stuff.

A smaller mill (we'll call this one the 20) could easily be built that would produce somewhere in the neighborhood of 20 cfm @ 40" H2O. This mill would probably have a 6-8' diameter blade and need a 20' tower. A yet smaller mill that would produce a max of 10 cfm would have a 4-6' diameter blade and need a 12-15' diameter tower.

Is anyone interested in building one of these smaller units? I could produce a CAD drawing with the specs and you could try buiding one. They would be mostly junkyard parts plus some wood for the blades or epoxy/fiberglass/foam for those who know fiberglassing. I'd put out the drawing at no charge if you shared data on it. Let me know

I'm sure there are plenty of people out there interested in such things. I'm interested but our wind here is not nearly steady or strong enough to make windmills as worth while here but I know there are others on the forum who could make real good use of such things.

Wind around my area is certainly steady enough.... more than interested... yes please...

Actually most of us here use a program called "sketchup".... don't know if you've heard of it...

Do you, or does anyone, know if CAD files can be imported....???

Nice thing about having it in sketchup format is that it can be uploaded to the shared "download" area....

yes.
http://sketchup.google.com/support/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=57597
http://sketchup.google.com/support/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=38579
http://download.sketchup.com/OnlineDoc/gsu_mac/K-Input_and_Output/Import_and_Export/IO-DWGDXFImport.htm
http://www.wonderhowto.com/how-to/video/how-to-import-and-use-a-cad-file-in-sketchup-181579/

I have a very steady wind nearly year round. I also have space and a 20' tower would not be a problem here. I would be happy to share the data.

Mathew

I'm confused with this thread.

Just to clarify.
your talking using Wind to mechanically power the blowers, like using a windmill to pump water but pumping air instead.
Not using the wind to create electricity to power electric blowers.

I had a quick google search for sweetwater blowers and could only come up with electrical.

cheers
Ron

I read it as being electricity free... the losses in converting mechanical to electricity and then electricity back to mechanical are crazy.

that's sort of like burning coal to boil water to make electricity to run a desalination plant!

Hi
Im with u there Puda with the madness of conversions and losses, however if one was the read about Teslar, and I wont start on his principles as it seems to bring the worst out in people especially things that have an efficiency of greater than 1 ( gee I wasnt going to do that). Anyway Im interested in a design, I use ACAD most days at work and with a son as a blacksmith Im sure we could put something together, now as far as councils and rules, arent they here for the people, dont we employee them, shouldnt they be scared of us, not us overgoverned by them? (ok im off the soap box) I ll just skulk outside and keep digging my FT hole, im on holidays yee haa, Rupert do u think a tower would stand out to much in my front yard ? lol
Would love a plan and would be grateful, thanks

Bree

sorry Kuda not Puda- not disrespect intended

Bree