Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

You didn't think I had forgotten about my bicycle did you? At this rate I could even have a few dotted around the system... hee hee! Offer the ultimate gym experience! Who gets to watch fish swimming around.... therapeutic you know... ... sit among all the oxygen producing plants..... and pedal away to health..... I can see them lining up!!! Modify the "Stair Climber" to work the pistons too..... Hmmmm.... I could really get into this!

I am about 50 meters from the river... a small walk. Would be neat if I could just use the river flow to power my AP system... but reality checks in here... I would not want to put this water into the system.... not sure how clean it is for something like this. It is a pity because it would be very reliable compared to wind... The proposed site is behind the house anyway so even further.

They would have so much fun watching me they would have to have a go themselves! You got a pic of a bike with oval wheels? A definite must see!

you absolutely want to use all nature resources to the best advantage, don't you, Chelle?
and apparently you're not the only one

As I have already pointed out, using wind and water power to produce electricity is a waste if you are going to re-transform electricity into motion

that makes direct pumping with wind/water energy much more interesting

well, here's another idea that I have come up with years ago that should make your heads spin
somebody has spelled it out on the net:

"Other Uses For Wind Power (frank's note: could be water power as well):

Remember that every time you convert energy from one form to another, there is a bit of loss. Belt drives, chain drives, gears, inverters, and the like all have losses in the range of 10-15%. You can tell that interposing many of these intermediate steps between the prop and the end use of the energy will greatly reduce the useful power you get out. Although it's tempting to just create electricity, store it, and use it to do everything, sometimes it's not practical.

Most of the time that energy storage is mentioned, what's being referred to is the storage of electricity. It's important to think of what other uses you might come up with for the power though. I myself plan to run my electric hot water heater with a windmill. This is an ideal use, since over the course of a day, there is usually enough wind to heat the water up, hopefully by shower time! Since the heater has 2 elements, I can leave one connected to the utility power and turn it on when necessary; the second element is available to us. The point is that here we have a useful storage medium. Since my water heater costs me $35 per month or so to run, I figure it would be a real benefit to run it with wind power when possible, which is most of the time around here.

Old-style windmills use wind power directly to pump water up out of the ground; a rod moves up and down and pulls the water up directly. This is a fairly direct use of the wind power and is pretty efficient. I myself have the idea of using wind power to mechanically agitate a large tank of water; this should result in the heating of the water directly, without any intervening steps. In all of my searches of the internet, I've only seen this mentioned in one other place, probably because it would be difficult to agitate a pressurized tank. I've been thinking of elevating a tank somewhat and agitating that with a prop mounted above it -- maybe!

A company called Bowjon mounts small air compressors on windmills and runs the compressed air down into water wells. When the air bubbles out at the right depth, into the right diameter of pipe, it makes a pretty good water pump, and there are no moving parts to mention except for the air compressor! I like this idea, and as I am working on a cable tool rig for drilling my own water wells, I hope to actually get this setup going. Someone even gave me an original Bowjon compressor and the literature, although it seems like any air compressor would work.

Another idea is to use the wind power to directly run a small air conditioning compressor. Nowadays most small A/C compressors are sealed units, with only the tubes and wires protruding, but the sort we're talking about looks like a small air compressor which is run by a belt. A friend of mine also says that old Delco car A/C compressors will work fine and are very durable.

Since compressors "generate" both heat and cold at the same time, a small compressor could, for example, heat a large tank of water and cool another large tank, so this heat and cold would be available when needed.

Please excuse the poor drawing of the coils in the tanks. :-) In any case, insulated tanks of some sort filled with water would probably do the trick. Filling them with bricks would store more heat/cold. The key accomplishment here is the generation of "cold" from wind power in the most direct manner possible, so that we avoid multiple conversion losses.

This is about the best way of getting cold out of a wind turbine that I can think of. Generating electricity, with which to run an air conditioner, is not likely to be practical. Can you imagine the size of the generator, batteries, and inverters it would take to run an air conditioner? :-) "
http://alton-moore.net/wind_turbines.html

I would like to debate further on this idea if anyone is interested
could become a new thread:
Other Uses For Wind and Water Power
the coil pump would fit in there too

don't let it haunt your sweet dreams...

frank

I have been looking for it or better a video on the net
didn't find one

pity
it was hilarious

reread my suggestion in my last post: it would not be river water you'd be pumping but the water in your sump

frank

Right on the using river power to pump system water. Essentially the water wheel is turned by the river attached to an axle that would rotate the coil pump in the sump tank.

Biggest thing to figure out there is how to run the axle from the wheel in the river to where ever the sump is without causing access issues around the property. And if it is a really long distance, the axle would get heavy, making it harder for the river to turn it.

As distances for direct mechanical use of the river power gets longer, micro hydro power generation becomes more attractive.

Then again, perhaps you could divert some of the river water from further upstream in a spillway to get it close enough but at a height near the system and use the falling water from the spillway to turn your water wheel and then the river water returns by stream/spillway back to the main flow of the river. Granted, this only works if the topography cooperates with you and there are no legal issues of directing water from the river.

Sounds like you have some really lovely natural resources at your disposal there. Good luck harnessing them.

Wowee! Lots more to think about! Yummy!!!!

this looks like it could be an innovative project
if you would get permission for using the river's force for green energy, you would most probably have a fair chance to financial support too
at least in Europe you would

frank

Chelle.

I was thinking you might use a coil pump in the river, feeding a side tank at the top of your system. The tank will discharge to a Overshot water wheel which turns the coil pump aerator in the first fish tank. The discharge from the first water wheel then is collected and piped to the next lower water wheel/coil pump at the next fish tank, and so on till the water flows past all of the fish tanks and is returned to the river after the last one. No river water ever needs to get into your system.

Overshot water wheels can do more work than a undershot water wheel with the same flow of water.
Check this link
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Waterwheel

Matt

Now that would be a sight to behold

Absolutely.

Wasteful. Losses at each conversion.

As he says .... SOMETIMES... .... Solar to storage makes a lot of sense when there is an abundance of sun. It is also placed where you want it... above any applicarion needing power. Perhaps he is in a northern climate?

Only sometimes for me. I would have to have a very well-balanced, large windmill set on a high prop to maximise the wind opportunity offered here. But I find his innovative thinking fascinating.... never heard of this before. I do of course have the river flowing strongly in constant motion.... but not anywhere near enough for ease of application. When looking to heat water solar would be most efficient for me.... heat to heat.... not motion to heat.

Is interesting... but again ... motion to heat.... more expensive use of energy than heat to heat when solar heat readily available.

Quite amazing.... Not quite got a handle on this.... I understand that the air bubbles would immediatly rise... and being condensed would expand as they rise.... would this carry the water up?
is it not the full AC that does this?.... compressor, condensor and evaporator together? Compressor....compresses freon gas and so heats it up.... moves to coil (condensor)..... heat dissipated in water tank in his example I suppose... moves to evaporator still highly pressurised but cool so turns to liquid and enters the evaporator through a very small hole to allow a little in at a time. Here the liquid evaporates turning back into gas... if this section is placed in his "cool tank" it would take heat from this water leaving it cooler... basically the action of an AC but doing heat transfers into water instead of air. And all driven by a belt attached to a windmill. Is interesting.

The reason I questioned whether just a compressor is used... seems to me the whole AC cycle is used... modified to water instead of air.... what am I missing?

Go for it!

OK... Got you.... did think of this but so far away... many challenges to overcome so not sure it would end up being cost-effective. Wish it were not so.... lots of lovely power just rushing past....

Bubbles to pumping :

http://www.airliftpump.com/index.htm

Thankfully I don't need permission. Title deed says I own halfway into the river.

Wouldn't want to look for financing again. Been the route of high gearing since Rudi died. I raised up a vehicle repair shop... frainchise of Shell.... I know they are in OZ as well.... Auto-Serve.... but here it was as franchises. (I owned and ran the business... didn't fix the cars.) They decided they didn't want franchisees anymore once the concept proved so successful and effectively pulled the plug on us. Not interested in having others have such powerful sway over my day to day business life again.... whether at a financial or managerial level. Want to build this system up from grass-roots and as simply as possible to avoid the burden of interest rates and accountability to less interested parties in the workings of the enterprise. Sometimes something grown from small beginnings outlasts something large and highly structured from inception. I want to enjoy life while doing business. From where I am standing now minimising stress and enjoying life are equally - if not more - as important as making money.

I want to go commercial on this venture in a couple of years so is really quite a serious quest for knowledge at present. This takes time and so no need for a rush of funds. An elephant is eaten one bite at a time..

Yes. I love the idea... but wouldn't it require a massive coil to raise water to great height? I would also have to lay a lot of piping... not impossible.... .... the size of the pump in the river concerns me more.

OK ... have seen the overshot waterwheel... that would do it but I would lose something like this in a flood... and too big to remove to safety... pity.

I had thought of using the coil water wheel to raise water up about 10 meters to the river bank for irrigation... overflow into a second tank to prime a ram pump.... which pumps to another tank... efficiencies obviously have to be worked out in terms of how much water can be lifted from this head... but this could go on right up the hill and past the house to a top tank. From there irrigation could be triggered when the tank full. This could all be disconnected in the rainy season... which is also the flood season... raise water wheel safely out of the water... so needs to be a practical size that a winch could handle with ease.

If I had a second parallel system like this that keeps filling a tank only used to push the waterwheel alongside the Fish Pond - which then drives the coil inside the Fish Pond - as you say..... Waterwheel down to waterwheel would be amazing to watch. This would be more useful if fish were the primary goal and stocking rates higher than normal. It seems to me that in reading I have picked up that it does not take a lot of fish to produce a lot of healthy plants. Perhaps this will give me a way to use more space for GBs by giving up some Fish Pond size... the most costly part of the build. Must think about this.... I could even run it off the first system up the hill actually if I think about it and irrigate at night when cooler temps put less demand on DO. Maybe no need to build the second system speciific to this anyway. Major cost saving... and I want to do the irrigation anyway!

I just adore how big dreams can get! And the finished product is usually phenomenal because brainstorming is so uninhibited!

Thanks Matt!

Definitely. Needs to be staged.


More cost effective.


Unfortunately it doesn't co-operate for this application. Could only do something like that right alongside the river ... fish cages is a likely application here in the quieter spillway water. But the threat of water suddenly rising 10 meters overnight turns me away from the idea.



Thanks TCL. It looks very promising.