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  • Page 3 of 3 FirstFirst 123
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    Thread: measuring how much water is moved by an airlift?

    1. #41
      BWG is offline Senior Member
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      Add 2 cups of white vinegar to the pipe and then fill with water. What do you have in your water that foams so much?

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    2. #42
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      Zac,
      The person that wrote you was thinking exactly like I was... I was thinking that this 'test" could determine the sweet spot (best depth for injection of air) for a given system because nothing changes but the depth of injection.
      As to the foam issue it is insignificant if you just keep lowering and lowering and lowering the injection point every 20 seconds or so...when you quit seeing matching lowering of the clear pipe level then the sweet spot has to be "right near there."
      OH SEXUAL INTERCOURSE! I have had a reverse brain flatulence! (trying to get by the heavy handed censorship on this site) Ok Ok Ok let me think about this...
      This foam issue? no maybe just all of it..dang it man.... now my brain is having to open up a bit more...
      Nope I couldn't go there...not in my brain alone....
      I THINK (and only think) that this procedure will give a person much greater insight in to where the sweet depth/spot for injection in a given system if all the other aspects remain the same. It isn't perfect, but it is better than anything else I have thought of, and everything i have seen.
      How 'bout using a weak air pump, one you are sure (as much as we can be sure of anything?) will not overtax your testing apparatus?

      And before we play with other aspects like friction and shitizzle can we just find a sweet depth/spot for any system?
      "Those aren't poodles. They're Dobermans with afros."

    3. #43
      Zac Penn is offline Supporting Member
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      Quote Originally Posted by BWG View Post
      Add 2 cups of white vinegar to the pipe and then fill with water. What do you have in your water that foams so much?
      I am not sure. It was probably a combination of a dirty 4" pipe that has been sitting on a rack for months at a time, and possibly some kind of residue on the clear tubing that was rubbing off on my hands. I didn't think about it before I setup the system so I didn't clean the pipe or tubing ahead of time. When I have some more free time I can clean this out and retest.
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    4. #44
      Zac Penn is offline Supporting Member
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      Quote Originally Posted by lukef View Post
      Zac,
      The person that wrote you was thinking exactly like I was... I was thinking that this 'test" could determine the sweet spot (best depth for injection of air) for a given system because nothing changes but the depth of injection.
      As to the foam issue it is insignificant if you just keep lowering and lowering and lowering the injection point every 20 seconds or so...when you quit seeing matching lowering of the clear pipe level then the sweet spot has to be "right near there."
      OH SEXUAL INTERCOURSE! I have had a reverse brain flatulence! (trying to get by the heavy handed censorship on this site) Ok Ok Ok let me think about this...
      This foam issue? no maybe just all of it..dang it man.... now my brain is having to open up a bit more...
      Nope I couldn't go there...not in my brain alone....
      I THINK (and only think) that this procedure will give a person much greater insight in to where the sweet depth/spot for injection in a given system if all the other aspects remain the same. It isn't perfect, but it is better than anything else I have thought of, and everything i have seen.
      How 'bout using a weak air pump, one you are sure (as much as we can be sure of anything?) will not overtax your testing apparatus?

      And before we play with other aspects like friction and shitizzle can we just find a sweet depth/spot for any system?

      Yeah the foam issue was the biggest letdown of this test, but hopefully after I clean the pipe and tubing I can eliminate some of the foaming. I will be sure to bring some vinegar to the warehouse as well to see if that helps.

      We are in agreement though that this test is really about finding the sweet spot for an air pump/air lift combination, right?
      Hakko 40L is the weakest pump I have.
      Zac Penn.... Please sign-up for our MAILING LIST HERE
      904-294-2231
      Zac@DeepwaterKoi.com
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    5. #45
      hp is offline Senior Member
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      Quote Originally Posted by Zac Penn View Post
      Well....Poop!!!!

      That test doesn't work out very well. I tried it with a 10' long piece of 4" pipe and things were going good until we started to get around 6 feet of submergence and 13" or so of lift. The air/water mixture turned into a foamy froth and would continue to overflow with the froth even without lowering the air stone anymore. That was giving us false water levels in the clear tube so i had to abandon that method.

      I then switch over to specific submergences with the air off and the riser tube completely full. I would then turn on the air pump and wait for the actual mixture to stop overflowing and the froth to start emerging. I was hoping that would yield clear results but even when i dropped the air stone to 9.5' feet (roughly 20 LPM of air from the Hakko 40L) the lifting height just kept going up. That means a 10' pipe was not long enough to get to the point of diminishing returns or the "sweet spot". I don't have the time or supplies on hand to make it any taller today so this was a bust. Lift at the final test was around 21" before the froth was an obvious factor, and obviously the water flow produced was a zero.

      So does that mean that with a
      Submergence of 9.5', zero lift height, 23 watts and 20 LPM of air supply to a single airlift,
      would produce more total water flow than
      Submergence of 4', zero lift height, 30 watts and 40 LPM split evenly between two identical airlifts?

      I seriously doubt it but that is just a hunch based on previous experience and thinking about the friction losses inside the single 4" riser tube with a massive amount of water flow VS the friction inside two 4" riser tubes with only moderate water flow. Maybe if the pipe was larger diameter that wouldn't be an issue but then you would still need to proportion the air in a larger tube so general flow vs friction ratios should be similar.

      Too much brain power is needed and I am lacking it right now
      Zac,

      Thanks for doing the test and interesting data.

      My thought on air output estimate at certain submergence/backpressure is that.. The actual depth/back pressure that the air stone sees is not 9.5ft. The actual depth/submergence should be measured from the airstone to the water level on the clear tube because the water density in the 4” pipe is less (with ~21” lift, the actual/effective submergence is ~7.7ft (9.5ft -21” = 7.7’)) So, you may have more air flow than 20LPM that you estimated.. I think this is something we easily miss when estimating the air flow for an airlift system based on how deep the air manifold/stone is “below the pond water level”.

      hp.

    6. #46
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      Quote Originally Posted by Zac Penn View Post
      Yeah the foam issue was the biggest letdown of this test, but hopefully after I clean the pipe and tubing I can eliminate some of the foaming. I will be sure to bring some vinegar to the warehouse as well to see if that helps.

      We are in agreement though that this test is really about finding the sweet spot for an air pump/air lift combination, right?
      Hakko 40L is the weakest pump I have.
      YEP.
      But it may open new areas of understanding because we may see something we didn't see before.... like once the injection site is a certain depth and in the sweet spot is the sweet spot a tight range like we think ..OR what showed up in one of your attempts, where the sweet spot could be several feet long. And thereby represent some relationship between air volume being injected and depth...which is actually a result of the force/ability of the pump. If it is less pressure the pump generates more air...the deeper you go the less air is being injected...but the force from the pump is close to constant...you know this but it is worth mentioning.... There may be a massive (practical) sweet spot.
      "Those aren't poodles. They're Dobermans with afros."

    7. #47
      lukef's Avatar
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      hmm after being around the pond and staring at the water flowing through the vortex chamber, and imagining well...
      I remember reading some hocus pocus about the water and air in an airlift chamber was lighter in total than the water in the pond so the pond water pushed the water out of the airlift.... well then why didn't water leave the small tube and enter and remain in the airlift tube? Unless that is not true at all.
      In that case it would be the rising air bubbles pushing from below and pulling from above that provides all the "lift."
      So it is all about the size, shape, and speed of the air bubbles? is it?
      "Those aren't poodles. They're Dobermans with afros."

    8. #48
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      Quote Originally Posted by lukef View Post
      hmm after being around the pond and staring at the water flowing through the vortex chamber, and imagining well...
      I remember reading some hocus pocus about the water and air in an airlift chamber was lighter in total than the water in the pond so the pond water pushed the water out of the airlift.... well then why didn't water leave the small tube and enter and remain in the airlift tube? Unless that is not true at all.
      In that case it would be the rising air bubbles pushing from below and pulling from above that provides all the "lift."
      So it is all about the size, shape, and speed of the air bubbles? is it?
      Because there is no change in the airlift tube. When the air is off, the airlift tube has water and air in it. They are just stratified. When the air is turned on, the airlift tube still has the same amount of air and water in it. They are just well mixed. Either way, the overall mass remains the same as long as water doesn't flow out of the top of the tube. The air being added does flow out of the top of the tube thus maintaining the same water/air relationship as when the pump is off.
      Last edited by nil13; 11-21-2018 at 10:54 AM.

    9. #49
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      Quote Originally Posted by nil13 View Post
      Because there is no change in the airlift tube. When the air is off, the airlift tube has water and air in it. They are just stratified. When the air is turned on, the airlift tube still has the same amount of air and water in it. They are just well mixed. Either way, the overall mass remains the same as long as water doesn't flow out of the top of the tube. The air being added does flow out of the top of the tube thus maintaining the same water/air relationship as when the pump is off.
      that ain't nuthin I wasn't thinking. It is just that the information on the net at one time supported a theory that the airlift "water" became lighter and was forced out by the heavier pond water, and that was what caused an airlift to work.
      I was just bringing up how the test done by Zac seems to debunk that.
      "Those aren't poodles. They're Dobermans with afros."

    10. #50
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      That is what causes an airlift to work as a pump. In this case, the aerated water is more bouyant than the non-aerated water and so it sits on top of the heavier water. Because the volume of the aerated water can increase and still be contained you don't see movement. mass equilibrium between the two chambers is maintained (it's probably better to think of the two chambers as equal in volume instead of a big tube and a tiny tube). If you controlled for volume by allowing the airlift to overflow then the pumping action would start as the heavier pond water moves in to make up the mass that was lost. This airlift is working because the water level does increase in the airlift. It just doesn't pump because there is no circuit to move mass. If Zac overflowed this airlift, the level in the small tube would draw down to reach a new equilibrium with the lower mass in the airlift tube.

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