Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

Wow that's awesome system.
But I think it's too heavy investment.

Lets see how you think about that in 5 years.

Reminds me of the old saying, "You have to spend money to make money"

Damn, I'm spending money without intention to make money. Guess that I should change my intention than, or stop spending money.

Anybody has an idea about how much airflow and air pressure is needed for air lift of 1" from about 40 meters deep to ground level?

Did a test with my shop air compressor at around 7 bar and squeezed the flow, but it is to rough to come to conclusions with that. Goal is to have a dedicated air compressor for the well that uses minimum power at highest possible pressure and flow.

Suggestions and ideas are very welcome.

You need to know the ratio of submergence.

Length of pipe above well water level / length of pipe below water level at the bottom of which is your air injection.

If your air injection is halfway up the submerge pipe then the lenght of your submerged pipe is effectively cut in half or in other words put it at the bottom to get maximum lift.

Once you have that you can then start working out flows of air and water.

Hi Stuart,

Well is 40 meter deep, water table before pumping about 6 meter below grade, air injection at around 38 meter below grade. If I'm correct that means air injection 32 meter below water table (40-6=34-2=32), total head to overcome would be 32+7=39 meter (7 meter is 6 meter to grade from water table at start plus 1 meter above grade).

In short, length of pipe above well water level is 7 meter, length below water level 34 meter, air injection at 32 meter below water level. Pipe diameter is 1".

Tried to find a usable formula but didn't got anything useful back of Google.

Thanks for helping.

Using the Cornell Air lift program.

That is an incredible program. But what does it all mean? I would imagine you are shooting for the highest pumping efficiency, but the other numbers seem to be all over the place...

Watch out for nitrogen saturation if injecting that deep with atmospheric air. Nitrogen is much more soluble than O2 and at that depth you would need to degas.

Diver, Ryan?

The plan is to pump up through a slow sand filter into a group of cisterns, total capacity of around 150m3, divided over 3 or possible 5 cisterns. I still need the water to be tested to know its quality and wether it can be used for drinking water and the AP system. After the cisterns we could place a RO system to give it a final filtering for drinking quality and the AP.

If I'm correct the nitrogen will be degassed in these cisterns. Damn Ryan, now I'm bothered by digging back into my faded memory about diving theory. Want to have it fresh....

BTW, did you got the message on the other thread about your 20amp breaker system?

Thanks very much for the print out, Stuart. Much obliged for that. I also run in some stuff on the web about increasing the efficiency of air lifting. I will find it back and post some of it here, since I think it is surely of interest for AP.

There are some guys in Belgium doing Koi that have also a very interesting way of air lifting. Although at first sight it is not mend to lift much higher than the water table in the pond, I think there is potential in it to lift just enough for a well worked out AP system. Perhaps that way all circulation could be handled by air pumps?

Going to study that chart now!

Don't want your fish or plants to get bent.lol You guys are making it to hard...just stop at 15' for 15 minutes and you'll be good. before all the computers came out, it was plan your dive- dive your plan. lol Sorry, I couldn't resist.

No but my brother is into all that rebreather deep diving wreck diving hardcore crap
I will one day!

As long as you have a treatment plan for the water then you should be fine. Didn't get the message about 20a breaker and honestly I don't remember what thread that was sorry!

Would love to see the links.

Circulating a system via airlifts may be possible but you have to be careful of nitrogen like Ryan said. To make airlifts lift more than very small heights you need relatively deep submergence and as soon as you have that the [N2] will be too high.

There are geyser pumps but what I found was that once you got above certain relative static heads the efficiencies were crap. Axial flow pumps much better (70-82% efficiency).