Air Lift Method of Water Well Pumping
12 February 2009
In ancient times, they did not have pipes and plumbing like we have today. They used entire streams of surface water diverted down a mine shaft with an air gap some distance down. They then would continue the stream down further into a separation chamber where they would remove the trapped air and the water would then be channeled up to below the air/water gap to maintain back-pressure. Every 30 feet of difference between the air/water gap and the discharge stream of water would add one atmosphere or about 15 pounds per square inch of air flow/volume. The compressed air then would be sent by much smaller channels into the rest of the mine to ventilate the gasses that would naturally build up. This system is known to be thousands of years old but is not taught to modern engineers. You must go to the old books over a hundred years ago to learn this. The reverse is also true. You an bubble air into small pipes and lift water out of the mine and bundles of pipes/tubes/hoses increase the flow of water out. The intermittent bubbling of water in each hose will push slugs of water out of deep mines. This has been used for centuries using the compressed air source described above. When James Watt invented the first steam engine, it was not steam pressure powered. He would fill a cylinder with one atmosphere of wet steam, seal it off then give it a shot of cold water, this produced a high vacuum. Natural air pressure would then push the piston and cause the attached link to create a suction at the other end of a rocking beam with an inlet and outlet check valve to suck water out of the mine. Sometimes the water pump piston would be at the end of a long cable at the bottom of the mine. This is done in oil wells because of the thick viscous nature of the material. Pushing rather than pulling out the fluid. Because of atmospheric pressure is limited too about 14.7 PSI (pounds per square inch) you can only pull water up 28-30 feet, but you can push it thousands of feet.
In Los Gaviotas, Venezuela there are many table top mountains with rushing rivers that have sliced up the plains they were carved from. Sometimes the difference in elevation from the river water to the dry land on top is many thousands of feet. There someone has used old mining technology to pump the river water from below to the dry islands in the sky so that the land can grow food and sustain life. They float a 55 gallon drum with a garden hose wrapped around it with an open end and the other end connected to a rotating pipe union that allows for the barrel to turn. They then fill the drum with a little water so as to control the level of the horizontal axis and anchor it to the side of the stream. As the moving water would turn the barrel, the open end of the hose would take a slug of air then of water. The difference of the sizes of the slug of air and water would depend on the level of water inside the drum. With some tuning, you could adjust for maximum delivery to irrigate your land.
Anyone who has owned a fish aquarium have seen the water filter pump that uses an air pump to operate. The bubbled water is like AC or alternating or pulsed current which can go farther distances than DC or direct current. Current is established by a difference in force between the plus (+) and the Minus(-). The true also holds for fluid and air pressure. Flow occurs when the pressure is greater at one point and lesser at another. Fluid diodes can be made by having a funnel feeding into another funnel/nozzle, so that in one direction flow is laminar or smooth and the opposite it is turbulent or minimal.
Other fluid diodes or check valves can be made by a ball in a funnel so that in one direction the fluid lifts the ball and in the reverse seats the ball. By adding a spring the ball check can work in any position. Swing checks have a pivoted pendulum gate that in one direction is lifted and in the reverse direction is seated against itself. Relief valves are similar in construction but they have adjustable or fixed tensioned springs or weighted rods that provide the reverse push against the ball or gate. In deep well pumping you may need check valves at the bottom and top of the well and sometimes in between.
Sometimes in the activation of a new or troublesome well a vacuum is needed to help wick the fluid through porous earth/ sand or gravel. If you can seal off the top of the well and pump the air out helps. Sometimes the introduction of dry ice (CO2) in a sealed environment works, this can create a slow but high vacuum. But the best method of creating a vacuum is to fill the well bore hole with steam, seal it off and let it cool naturally can get things flowing. A check valve on top to let out any pressure is recommended for safety.
Pumping water from great depths it is better to float a gas that to pump/pull or push the water. By using electrolysis to break the water into its component gasses you can float the separated gases any vertical distance since gasses fill a volume where liquids seek their lowest level relative to gravity. The difference in the density of air/gas to liquid water is (1000) to (1) while at the same temperature and pressure. Gasses then can be burned at the surface to produce heat and water. Otherwise a secondary reverse electrolysis chamber to recover about 80% of the electrical energy and still produce water. By either burning or fuel cell you end up with very pure water. Water at a depth of a mile is considered mineral and not subject to most surface water rights laws/controls.
Most surface water is unfit to drink and shallow wells in the vicinity of animal herds and septic systems are often polluted. It is possible by use of fountains to aerate in sunlight your drinking and cooking water. Introduction of air into water cleans up most of the biologicals. To remove chemicals, heating or distilling may be required. Use of replaceable charcoal filters can absorb some arsenic and heavy metals found in nature. Old Testament leaders schooled in Egypt were know known to make bitter waters fit to drink by putting bags of salt in animal skins and letting them sit. This would create an ionic exchange where the metals would switch with the sodium or potassium and the osmotic nature (chemical diode/check valve) of the skins would only allow flow of the salt’s metal out and the toxic metals in. (IMPORTANT) The right side or inside out nature of the skins depends on the nature of the skin bags used.
If using pumped or compressed air to purify the electrification or ozone-ation of that air makes the process more efficient. You can make an ozone purifier by using a high voltage source such as a neon sign transformer or a car spark/ignition coil. To control the spark heat you can control the voltage in by use of a resistor . A hot spark will produce nitrous oxides and a cold spark will not. If you can see it, it is hot if you cannot see it but feel it like the charge that forms on the surface of a television screen or computer screen then you produce tri-atomic oxygen or 03. A simple resistor made of carbon or even in emergency charcoal or pencil lead can do. Any transformer will work with pulsed or alternating current. In a car the pulses are formed with the rotor in the distributor cap. In older cars such as the Ford Model A and the Ford Model T a vibrating iron reed formed a relay that would dance or chatter forming the pulses. Only when the electromagnetic field is moving during its switch-on and switched-off will electrical energy transmit from the primary set of windings to the secondary set of windings. To make a pulsar for a modern car coil you can use a 12VDC relay that feeds back on itself, so that when current is supplied to its windings it automatically breaks its own power shutting itself off and in the off position turns itself on. Example: 12VDC in becomes pulsed 12000VDC out. Use of a control gap or larger carbon block resistor used on phone lines and lightning protection can protect system early burnout.
A spark gap is usually two metal balls mounted on an electrically insulated block and sometimes adjustable gap for best operation. To make the ozone chamber itself use inexpensive florescence tubes mounted centered in concentrically wit an air gap of about 1/8 inch. The metal tubes being the ground and the inside filaments at one end fed the high voltage. You should NOT see any purple or red sparks as this indicates too high a voltage for the air gaps used. Manifolds to house the metal tubes and glass tubes need to be made of electrically insulated and ozone resistant materials. They should allow for air flow in and out of the bundle(s). Air can be pumped/pushed or pulled across the inside air gap/space and then fed into the water to be purified. If you use the water flow to create an air flow such as a venturi device like that of a water bed de-watering device that works of garden hose pressure. Ozone produced by cold spark will kill bacteria, mold, mildew and viruses. Oxygen will also combust wit carbons, hydrocarbons and dissolved metals rendering them more subject to mechanical filtration. Oxygen enriched or ozone purified water can be pumped back into the well to purify the underground water pool. Ozone rich water is good for aquatic plants, fish and animals.
To store water for any length of time, original purity is paramount. Cooking or boiling works to some degree, addition of chlorine or iodine works but fouls the taste. Cheap red wine like a bottle to a barrel works best. Minor amounts of sea salt helps to slow any growing things but the concentrations must be kept to a minimum. Distilled water needs to be aerated and best when poured against metal free marble chips.
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