Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

Over the last couple of days I have been attempting to design a windmill aeration system(inspired by Jaymie/Axl original idea of aeration without power)
I came up with using spider gears from diff`s and axles from cars etc,but realized today what a pain in the bum all the welding,bearings,grease would be.I decided to have a beer and get the clothes in from the line.
As i was doing this two things hit home.
1)Its not very windy today
2)the clothes line is spinning.
Decided to have a little experiment

To cut a long story short this could be a very easy way to get movement from the wind

The aerator itself was hard to draw(Iknow what I want but not how to draw it)
If you could think of the downward lines as flatbar the width of a ruler,running from small lower circle to big upper circle and the top circle being turned 1/8 or 1/4, giving the bar a slanted look .
A standard washing line could be used for this as it already has all the requirements exept the cones(which could be replaced by flat sheets of thin metal.
As the windmill is spinning anyway a pully system could be rigged up to provide power via a generator/alternator(best of both worlds)

Has anyone got ideas to make this better???

Strange you should think of this today.
I had a similar thought but decided it would be to complicated and then thought of maybe a water wheel

As you all use water pumps i was thinking why not a water wheel/Paddle wheel, the outlet from the pump is directed onto the vanes of the water wheel.
a simple crank type handle could be attached with the other end going to a simple pump, The pump could be a piston style with reed valves to control the air flow piston on the rise allows air into the pump piston going down pushes the air out ( Fairly easy to build) , a bellow pump simlar to those old air bellows they use to use on fires (Harder to build) or a simple diaphram pump which would also be fairly simple to build.
Reed valve could be simply made up of rubber.
Cheers
Ron

Ron, have a look in jaymies thread(pg 37),the idea was to use a car a/c compressor.
What we want to achieve is powerless aeration so in blackouts we have air going to the tanks.
You definatly are on to something though and all ideas are welcome

Yeah I did read that earlier but dismissed it as.
1. You have to energize the magnetic clutch on a A/C Compressor, no power to the A/C no pumping.
2. It takes a fairly large force to turn an A\C Compressor when the clutch is engaged it would stall the windmill not turn the A/C Compressor.

I then thought of a normal type windmill with a crank handle, but the windmill would need to rotate on an axis so it would always face into the wind, this would not be a simple to design and build.

Then I though maybe a vertical access windmill ( Similar to your clothes line idea) as it would not have to turn into the wind to rotate, but then the crank design has to be quite complicated, hence when I gave it up as being to complicated.

I orginally had the thought to pump the water withthe windmill but thought the water would be to dense then thought about it as an Airator

can we not take the clutch off the compressor and have it straight drive?
also i can turn this compressor and the ones on most cars with my hand,maybe if the comp was in the position of the genny/alt in the drawing it would work better.

You can tighten the clutch down onto the pulley, that would elliminate the need to energize the clutch, but i still think that you would still have problems turning the compressor.

Hate to put a spanner in the works an car airconditioning compressor takes 2 to3 hp to drive and it runs with vaines whitch need oil to keep running so it means filtering out the oil A wind mill pumping water to a height and dropping will aireate providing there it wind when the power goes off

Hey F&F I thought of that also, but generally there is gas inside the compressor under pressure, this is what makes it harder to turn.

There are still quite a few A/C compressors that run pistons and not vanes.

It would still need to be oiled.

Either way its no real problem as the whole idea wasn`t based around the a/c comp anyway,it was just a thought on aerating from the return water.
The larger windmills i have worked on would do a good job of aeration but the whole idea is to be 1)easy to assemble/build 2)small enough for backyards and roofs 3)cheap, as we don`t all have the same budgets.

Ok, first, let's run some numbers: The pressure induced by air is density * (airspeed)^2. So a 10km/hour breeze would produce a pressure of about 10 Pa, or 10N / m^2. In other words, roughly a kg force for every square metre of drag area. So your air scoops might have an area of 2m^2 (generous) and a total torque of 2kgf 1.5m (30Nm). Let's say the maximum speed of the scoops is the airspeed (generous), then we have a power of 30N m * (10km/hour) / 1.5m pi or 17W.

Now the internal energy of a gas is pressure * volume, so if you want 10kPa air (1m water) then 17W will produce air at a rate of 1.7litres/s. Sounds plausible.

I think Ron is right, rather than trying to drive a refrigeration compressor you really want something optimised for large volumes of low pressure air. The most obvious system would be a diaphragm pump. Perhaps a car tyre inner rubber with a cam driving it in and out with two valves. We might be able to make one valve simply from the tank water - when the bellow compresses, the water is driven through the water directly. As the pressure is low, a simple flap type valve would probably suffice for the intake.

The next thing to consider is whether we can go directly from wind to oxygenated air. One idea would be to have a scoop direct air across the surface of the water to encourage waves to form, aerating the water.

Could we build an ET style pump using a tree as the source of oscillation?

My FIL bought us a small bellows type air pump for about $7 from an auto shop. We had thought of an off-set wheel run by a fan blade, with a piston pushing the bellows, which in turn pump air into the water

Njh,I do not want to appear rude,but the whole a/c comp thing is not what this is about,I should of explained myself better.
I want to use the aerator thingo at the bottom of the drawing (or one similar to it) direct drive from the shaft.With this spinning in the water it should either force air down or force water up thus causing aeration.
P.S I do appreciate your feedback though