Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

displacement...you may be onto something there.

OOPs

Sorry Dave , I thought the garage door spring idea was not thought up yet.

I thought I wuz a genious but I'm juzt anuther human bean.

Torsion may be a good alternative to using metal springs as the driving force.
Another thought was to add a 6:1 lever to the displacement option which makes it easier to lift the mass with less energy..think along the lines of trying to *butterflies* a medievel trebuchet with a 10-ton counterweight
With hindsight, a spring loaded slide valve operated by the displacement "block" makes better sense for one way charging flow from the fishtank to the sump.

hehe..you`ll have to substitute "butterflies" for the male equivalent of "Hen"

Ran some numbers, tell me if I'm wrong.
250W pump (say Ebara optima) running 14 cycles/day of 15 minutes/hour.
.25 * .25 * 14 = 875 Wh.
That's a lot of pedalling or lifting.

You`d get fit if you were pedalling
Here`s a displacement option, i`m sure its flawed but it might inspire some other ideas

But what is causing the masses to lift then fall?

Hi TCL
well, therein lies the problem
As the masses are balanced either one could be forced down with additional loading ..several people standing on it every hour or so maybe. I was thinking it may be possible to use a small tank on each mass to "tip the balance" by pumping a small volume of water into each alternately.
Another option may be a 6:1 lever arm and a single mass (say 1000kg) and counterweight the long end of the lever to a balance point with water (166L). Not exactly pumpless but it may be possible to move 1000L of water by pumping just 166L of water which is more efficient.

The pumpless situation is impossible so its a case of finding a method that moves the water with the least amount of effort/energy.
Using a lever seems like a reasonable bet.. puny egyptian pyramid builders used them to shift massive stone blocks

The best type of mass would be something as heavy as possible but with a large area.. so it floats

Principle of Archimedes
If the object is less dense than water (if it floats on water), it
displaces a weight of water equal to the weight of the object.
If the object sinks in water, it simply displaces a volume of water equal to the
volume of the object.

Get a huge sealed container, mostly air but with water at the bottom. Varn in ambient between day and night would expand the air and push the water out (not all) and then pull the water in. Still uses energy but no moving parts. Can't see a use for it myself but since this thread is about bizzare ideas this is another.

I would think... how i could implement a ram pump into my system!

Here you go OZ... we're always watch..

http://www.bamford.com.au/rampump/
An Australian Invention - Australian Patent No. 741896

.

Ditto, and it is driving me insane(r).

I have a pump that lifts 1.5gph 6', runs about 50watts. (This is 1200 watts per day or ten hours on an excercise bike: ain't gonna happen..I have other things to do.).

Now look at what we care about: let's call it 7kg of water lifted 2 meters or 14 joules. A watt is 1 joule/sec, so this is 14joules/60seconds=.25watts. Compare output to input: .25watts/50watts=0.5%.

Problem: Am I mad? Is the pump really only 0.5% efficient?!?

Possibilities:
1) I'm overlooking something (impossible, I know )
2) spoiled by cheap power, our pumps truly are really, really, really incredibly inefficient. Maybe it is possible that with a pendulum pump or some other positive displacement pump we could actually have more efficient pumping and actually make it reasonable to power this up by muscle power or wind or whatever. A treadle-powered pump is supposed to be able to lift 5 to 7 cubic meters per hour from boreholes 7 meters deep (wikipedia). If one calls it 5m^3 and 5 m deep one comes up with 7 watts; that's 28 times my 50watt pump! This looks possible!
3) I can't think of a number three possibility. Sorry. I'm off to bed. g'night.

ithink the problem lies here

"A watt is 1 joule/sec, so this is 14joules/60seconds=.25watts."

the pump pumps 7kg of water 2m high in ONE HOUR. so by my reckoning, 14 Joules in an hour.

Hours, minutes, seconds: what does it matter..it's all time! ( I meant 1.5 gpm, not gph. *sigh*)

But 14joules/hour would have been 60 times worse.... 0.004 watts!

What about an air bag on one side with a tube going into the fish tank. You fill the bag and it slowly lets air out into the water through an air stone. When it runs out the air pump starts up again to fill the bag and raise the system again. You use energy but you have to run air into the system anyway. Can't belive I've got ropped into this topic. Been thinking about springs all morning and I can't remember why.