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    Thread: Airlift design

    1. #1
      medicine2 is offline Senior Member
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      Airlift design

      Hello to all.

      After looking at DIY airlift projects done by the fine and creative members of the forum, I found that airlift actually does move around water for comparatively very low cost compared to conventional pump.

      I'm interested into making DIY airlift using existing plumbing and hardware available locally.
      There are sure plenty of more advanced and better design, but I found limitation of available items I can work on.

      Here is the plan :

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      - Instead of making pressure chamber jacket surrounding the outside of the shaft, I plan to create pressure chamber canister at the center using 2.5" pipe with end caps and drilled 1mm holes all over the side and top.
      - I intend to reduce the pipe diameter from 4 inches to 3 inches at a certain point (probably a couple of feet after the pressure chamber) to create more velocity and lift (intended use is as circulation pump from last filter chamber to main pond)
      - I figure that extra holes may be needed to be bored through the main uplift 4" pipe just above the pressure canister in order to increase uplift flow.
      As the pressure canister itself is blocking the uplift flow from the bottom, extra holes at the correct places would restore ideal flow.

      Air generator would be 50-60 lpm piston pump connected to DIY pressurized air canister for better stability/constant of air flow and pressure.
      It is also said that air reservoir improves the live of aerator (both diaphragm and piston alike).

      Name:  6-top-with-air-valve.jpg
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      Any thoughts?

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    2. #2
      medicine2 is offline Senior Member
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      Bump...

      Anyone?
      I figure if I dumped an airline at the very bottom of the airlift pipe it would just work. But surely fine tuning the design can make a noticeable difference in performance and efficiency.

    3. #3
      medicine2 is offline Senior Member
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      sorry double post

    4. #4
      tinyfisher's Avatar
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      Quote Originally Posted by medicine2 View Post
      Bump...

      Anyone?
      I figure if I dumped an airline at the very bottom of the airlift pipe it would just work. But surely fine tuning the design can make a noticeable difference in performance and efficiency.
      I have been researching airlifts and have seen a lot of people do it this way. Just drop an airstone down the tube. Like you said, won't maximize efficiency, but will work. I worry that your pressure canister would block too much water flow. If you went this route, I would drop the size of the canister considerably. Check out this link for an example:

      https://www.koiphen.com/forums/showth...or-and-aerator

    5. #5
      medicine2 is offline Senior Member
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      @tiny,

      Thanks for the link, similar design in this case is also proven to work well enough then.
      Just drop the size of the pressure canister and we wont have too much problem related to water inlet blockage.

      The issue about airstone is im worried about longevity or durability.
      Our local airstone seems to break off easily after some time. Sometimes it is the stone, sometimes it is the connection between the stone and plastic tubing.

    6. #6
      Marlo is offline Senior Member
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      I recently read somewhere that large bubbles work much better in an airlift. The recommendation was to just insert the airline without any air stones or other device that would make smaller bubbles. Has anyone experimented with this?
      63m3 gunite pool
      ProfiDrum CombiBio 50


    7. #7
      ricshaw is offline Senior Member
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      Quote Originally Posted by medicine2 View Post
      Any thoughts?
      I think your "canister" is just a big air diffuser. I agree that it is too big.


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    8. #8
      ricshaw is offline Senior Member
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      This is the best airlift demo I have seen in person.


      https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5gIs7yf781k


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    9. #9
      ricshaw is offline Senior Member
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      Quote Originally Posted by tinyfisher View Post
      I worry that your pressure canister would block too much water flow. If you went this route, I would drop the size of the canister considerably.
      You can use a tee for the water flow inlet above the air diffuser.



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    10. #10
      Primitive is offline Senior Member
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      I wished we can get more interest in this topic.
      I'm trying to research and see how much a good air pump cost and compare that to the price of a centrifugal pump.

      For example, a Medo 200lpm piston pump is around $650.
      A good Advantage pump is around that and can push over 6000gph for under 400 watts.

      There's no way a Medo can get that much water pushed up to the same height.

      The benefit of an airlift seems to be that it never clogs and no need for a prefilter.

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    11. #11
      mplskoi is offline Supporting Member
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      This is a unit that I made and tested just a bit. It is a 2 inch unit. I run a 3 inch unit on my bottom drain. It moves about 1500-2000 gph as long as I only lift it an inch or two. For about 45 watts of power.
      To better understand what you are looking at- the small line is the air supply line. It injects the air in the bottom part of the T. I used the perfectly sized hole saw to cut a perfect circle of a pretty fine stainless steel sieve mesh. The holes in the mesh are big enough it should never clog but small enough to get some pretty good bubble sizing. This little circle of mesh is wedged into the bottom of the T before the air inlet is glued into place. Once gluing is done the mesh is in there forever.


      If/when I someday do a pond redo I want to go nearly all airlift. As long as your water movement does not require much lifting then airlift should be the way to go. And for many of us who have our ponds somewhat less active for half of the year it would be great to not need to run a 400 watt pump over the winter.

    12. #12
      mplskoi is offline Supporting Member
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      If you were able to open up the bottom of the "T", this is similar to what you would see:

      In the pic you are seeing here I used some silicone to adhere this sieve into place. I let it plug a portion of the holes- figured I might actually get better bubble dispersement this way.

    13. #13
      mplskoi is offline Supporting Member
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      One other thought on your cost comparisons:
      You have to aerate anyhow. To keep a healthy pond you need to be running at least 45 watts of air power in most cases. So in some ways the air pump you might use to run an airlift is an air pump that you have to have on anyhow. So you might argue that there is no real cost in moving around 2000 gph with an airlift.

    14. #14
      Primitive is offline Senior Member
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      I like your air inlet and the curve T for the water to go in. This guarantees it will never get clogged as you stated. I did a funny airlift on my pond as well, to test. It had an unfortunate accident and sucked one of my little koi in, he didn't survive.

      As for the cost, well, let's discuss it.

      For example, aeration, which is highly important. If I pump water up to about 6-7 feet and use it in a Bakki shower, it will have built int aeration that's superior to an air pump, IMO. And with that centrifugal pump it can get up to 10000gph for around 600 watts. I've been putting alot of thought into this airlift design as well and seeing if it makes sense for me because I"m at the start of my project of pool --> pond conversion, 15000 gallons estimate, slightly more most likely.

      My goal is to achieve less than 1000 watts of electricity factoring all equipment, pump, UV, aeration and other misc items.
      If I were to use 600 watts in an airlift design, at 200lpm x 3 (MEDO or Jehmco piston pumps), I can't guarantee it will push 9000 gph at a desirable height to start using my bio filtration. However, with the pump, i can easily pull water up to 10' height at 9000gph for around 600 watts. Run that through the Bakki and sand/gravel filter and have a complete system.

      There is a HUGE downside to using a centrifugal pump, the need for pre-filtering. Otherwise you'd have to clean the leaf trap at least 2x a week. For pre-filtering an inline pump, there's a Zakki sieve unit, max flow around 10000gph for the price of $2700 shipped. Very expensive.

      If we can design an airlift that brings water up to around 3-4feet of height, we don't have to worry about pre-filter because it doesn't get clogged and as the water exits the pipe it can be filtered via gravity to a sieve or other matting materials.

      Problem is, how much energy does it take to bring the same volume of water up to 3-4feet compared to a pump. That's what we have to overcome.

      All in all, I'm all in for airlift designs, much more preferred based on their simple premise and fail safe design.

    15. #15
      mplskoi is offline Supporting Member
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      I think to realize the benefits of air lift you need to redesign your filtration system to one that does not need water to be lifted vertically much, but rather moved horizontally. Which I think means no showers or SG filters.
      But the euros have quite successfully done this. And while I have not been to Japan, it appears many of them have filtration systems that do not need lift.

    16. #16
      Primitive is offline Senior Member
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      Yes, its a whole redesign of how to incorporate filtration in horizontally.

      I've been trying to figure out how to drive a skimmer with an airlift design, I haven't been able to. It requires suction while airlifts are pushing.

    17. #17
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      Quote Originally Posted by Primitive View Post
      Yes, its a whole redesign of how to incorporate filtration in horizontally.

      I've been trying to figure out how to drive a skimmer with an airlift design, I haven't been able to. It requires suction while airlifts are pushing.
      You really just need a change in water level to make a skimmer work. Mine are gravity fed to the RDF with no actual suction. Just place the airlift where it would
      cause the change in level and gravity feed it from the skimmer.
      Last edited by icu2; 05-02-2016 at 02:22 PM.
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    18. #18
      ricshaw is offline Senior Member
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      Quote Originally Posted by mplskoi View Post
      I think to realize the benefits of air lift you need to redesign your filtration system to one that does not need water to be lifted vertically much, but rather moved horizontally. Which I think means no showers or SG filters.
      But the euros have quite successfully done this. And while I have not been to Japan, it appears many of them have filtration systems that do not need lift.
      How about a hybrid system? Smaller energy efficient pump to pump water to shower filter and airlift to move water horizontally through submerged filter.


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    19. #19
      medicine2 is offline Senior Member
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      Here is mine.

      5 inch system, not yet tuned. Already I can see its awesome potential at this stage.



    20. #20
      GloriaL's Avatar
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      There is a picture of one of mine on this thread: https://www.koiphen.com/forums/showth...d-500-gph-pump
      One of the things that Zac says improves your flow rate is what he calls submergence( I don't really know all the technical terms, just what seems to work). Submergence has to do with how far below the bottom of your pond the bottom of the air lift sits. We raised the QT up 6 inches so the airlift sat lower than the pond. I got around 1500-1800 gph flow from that one. There is an airlift on my other QT that uses one of Zac's air manifolds and we dug down about a foot into the ground to place that one. I think they both deliver about the same amount of water. The first one just has an air stone from Pentair aquatic eco that is a rectangular solid about 3" x 1 1/4" x 1 1/4" dropped down into the bottom of the 3" pipe. ( The pipe behind was actually an experiment with a compression chamber that did not work as well as the air stone)
      Last edited by GloriaL; 06-14-2016 at 08:01 PM.
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