Air Up Lifts

[vippymini]

have you set the hourly rate correct? are you on standard or eco7
given your on a standard rate. ive checked and even adding the QT ive got these results

[emmaandaj]

Hi Diego,

Excellent post-just read the translation-fantastic 40,000lph from 41 watts! I only managed 12000lph from a 70 litre pump and was impressed but that is unreal! Am i right in thinking that the test was conducted without air stones? The translation wasn't that clear? Also have you got any idea how the 12 8mm air lines were connected to the pump as ive never seen and 8mm manifold?
Thanks Again for the link

Hi Jane,

Judging by your pics of the airlifts you are moving a lot of water, especially if you have 18 off the one pump. Have you tried filling a bucket from one uplift whilst timing to work out a rough flow rate? Im gona have to do some more experimenting i think!

Cheers Andy

[Andy H]

No its doesnt work, I entered the same price as you put but just doesn`t calculate.
I have oase eco 16000 blagdon 65 and highblow100 I think...
No heater No UV

[vippymini]

weve never tested the volume from the tubes Mark just says it cleans the water so it must be working ...
and heres the manifold (well its a rough description)
[img]http://www.elkoi.es/images/stories/airliftdos5.JPG[/img]
i'm sure you could just scale up the manifold i made using larger pipe and taps.

[Andy H]

Jane
Thats spagetti!!!

you didnt happen to put that translation into word pro or something did you?

I can only seem to paste 150 words at a time, would take ages!!!

[vippymini]

oh i do hope your translating the whole webpage address and not just the text pieces at a time
scopy and paste this link into the translate WEBPPAGE
http://www.elkoi.es/index.php?option=com_co ... &Itemid=47" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
choose spanish to english
hit translate and watch the yelow fish
you should now have the whole page

or this might work if koiquest doesnt crop the link
http://babelfish.yahoo.com/translate_url?do ... =Translate" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

[eds]

have you set the hourly rate correct? are you on standard or eco7
given your on a standard rate. ive checked and even adding the QT ive got these results

That seems more like it Jane! I put a higher unit rate in as I thought power was more than that per unit!

[Andy H]

No the calculator wouldn`t work. never mind...

oh i do hope your translating the whole webpage address and not just the text pieces at a time
scopy and paste this link into the translate WEBPPAGE

I did start but thought it would take ages! lol
translated and printed for reading at work tomorrow but the bits I looked at look very interesting.
1000L max per 1W

[Andy H]

Yep I do like those uplifts, It was great today meeting Mick and wife(sorry name slips mind) and Jane & Mark and millions of kids and ponds QT`s etc.

Gonna definately try and play around with air uplifts now...

[estanque_koi]

Well, in our experience it's better just to dump off the usual manyfolds and 8 mm air lines. Switching to bigger size PVC pipe and air lines allows you to get more air delivered by the same air pump. I can't remember right now the exact pipe metrics we are using, maybe tomorrow I can tell exactly. Anyway I'm attaching a picture showing one of the first outlet arrangements I tried (still working) to replace an original manifold, so you can have an idea (not nice appeareance, I must admit ).

Some of the results of Frutos's experiments are clear and straightforward: i.e., you get more water flow pumping air whithout using airstones. Other results may be a little missleading, for example one might expect to easily build a gravity filter system that would run just on several airlifts fed by a 40 w air pump and still be able to easily get a magical 40,000 liter/h water flow. It's not so easy, don't forget that Frutos meassured the water flow delivered with almost zero water head (and no filter restriction).
However, it is feasible to run a pond and its filter system by airlifts moving an impressive amount of water with a fairly small wattage, if designed and built properly.

It would be too long to explain, maybe Frutos might take some pictures for you soon. Let me say he is currently using just a 100 w Resun airpump rated at a max. 150 liters/min. Yes, the whole pond filtered with a cheap airpump (114 euro in ebay germany) . Maybe next summer, feding an estimated daily ration of 1 or 1 and 1/4 kg, he might need to add an extra airpump to increase water flow and filtration, but even 200 watts would be a nice figure. Let see.
Remember, he is using big size air lines. He is also using big diameter airlifts - 110 mm pipe, and delivering water just under water surface level. That is the way you get the best airlift performance when everything else is equal, just avoid lifting the water!
Another extremely important thing: transfer ports must be huge to allow water entering the filter and then moving between filter sections and back to the pond easily, with as least flow restriction as possible. Frutos figured out a clever way to set up a sort of oscilating gate that will open when the airlifts are running, and close when they are stopped. And they do their job quite well.

Frutos started carrying out test whithout having heard or read a word about airlifts. I was quite skeptical, then I read a post by Alan Grey who used airlifts to drain debris out of the pond. I was very impressed by a video clip he uploaded in youtube, showing his 4 airlifts delivering a lot of water just running on a 40 w airpump.
Then I carried out a literature search and review on airlift design and performance and found several technical and scientific papers on airlift efficiency as well as demonstration of usage in low head recirculating aquaculture systems. I was surprised it is not a new issue, you can judge by this reference of a seminal paper published back in 1987:

N.C. Parker & M.A. Suttle 1987. Design of airlift pumps for water circulation and aeration in aquaculture. Aquacultural Engineering 6, 97-110

Even Ronald Malone (who developed bead filters for aquaculture) has conducted some research on this subject:
J.C. Loyless & R.F. Malone. 1998. Evaluation of air-lift pump capabilities for water delivery, aeration, and degasification for application to recirculating aquaculture systems. Aquacultural Engineering 18, 117-133.

there are some others, I just finally want to suggest that airlifts deserve to be taken into consideration.

[eds]

Coming from the side of air powered filter in tropical tanks surely you'd be best to have the airlifts exiting their water underwater so they're operating at a zero head? All you'd have to do is drill holes through the wall or set the uplifts in concrete so they don't allow water to slip back around them and you'd have much better performance.

Also with air-powered sponge filters they work much better and move much more water if the bubbles are broken up and as small as possible. I believe this is because of the greater surface area of the smaller bubbles dragging more water along with them. This would need to be balanced against the higher resitance of the air stones though. Maybe the best compromise might be a larger fitting at the bottom of the airlift (like a 3-2" reducer) where a ring of speedfit pipe with plenty of holes drilled in sits against the edge so the bubbles travel up the airlift, but don't reduce the cross section of the uplift to restrict water movement?

[vippymini]

heres a few answers and questions conbined.
it may be better to have underwater uplifts but its just easier to get the water up a little and over the side. remember K.I.S.S.

air powered sponge filters are totally different

yes you can have it with no airstones but balancing the flow of air using 1 pump asnd 16 or more outlets its easier to have them to add just a bit of backpressure.

the use of reducers and small rings of speedfit is just making it all to complicated

just make the setup basic and easy to adjust. the more you add the more you have to adjust and therefore the more that can go wrong. if you need more flow, add another airpump and loads more uplifts. youll still be saving eleccy.
i still think any gravity fed system can be replumbed to accept the uplift theory. remove pump, attach uplift box and tubes to side of pond and then join both with 4inch pipework.

[emmaandaj]

Hi All,

I had a play around at the weekend. I tried 1 1/2inch pipe and found a great improvement. I tested a secoh 40 as well and again found improvement, however i was unable to get anywhere nead the output quoted in that article from the secoh 40. Ive ordered some larger air line as the 6mm is obviously causing restriction.

But i did play around with the length of uplift pipe. I found the best i could get with a 70cm uplift was 14,000lph however when i increased the length to 90cm it shot up to 20,800lph. So by lengthening the pipe by just 20cm i increased flow by 6,800lph! In the article they were using 150cm uplifts which im guessing is why it achieved 40,000lph. Unfortunately most filters arent deep enough to enable such large uplift pipes!

Jane, you definately right about needing a bit of back pressure to balance out the air lines- i noticed if i ran to many airlines therer was no restriction and there was a considerable amount of difference between output from each air line.

I wish i could find such an effective way to save money on my electricity bill around the rest of the house!

Andy

[Andy H]

Typing again as it didnt seem to appear!

I can see what all the above are saying and had many a brain wave on different ideas.

Will have a play at the weekend with 2" and 4" pipe, with and with out diffusers. and lifting water and straight into water.

I can`t see that media would be a problem as far as restrictions are concerned if big enough pipes feeding it like M & J`s 4"

in the link I didnt understand what was meant about k1 in the pipe or the resriction on the end with slots etc???

[vippymini]

Andy, we got one of these for the house.
http://www.efergy.com/eone.html" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
[img]http://www.efergy.com/images/eone_pic_big.jpg[/img]
best £40.00 weve spent in ages
you soon learn to check and switch off stuff around the house....