Fri 5 Jun 2009
Air-Powered Water Pump
Posted by Guest Article
Found this video some time ago made by the Health Ranger from Naturalnews.com and after speaking with the fellows at Factor e Farm we see having one of these pumps as a top priority. The problem is they cost $600 and that’s out of this budget so my question is do any of you have access to the design for a pump like this or own one that you can take apart and take pictures of the internals so we can make our own?
Any help would be great. Also if after watching this video you choose to buy one a possible option would be having it shipped to Factor e first so they can break it down to understand its design and then it will be put back together and shipped to you
Thank you for your time..
PS by Marcin: We came up with the following design:
See the wiki page on the Compressed Air Water Pump for further details.
20 Responses to “ Air-Powered Water Pump ”
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June 12th, 2009 at 12:55 pm[...] infrastructure. Yesterday we got one step closer to this with a successful demonstration of an air-powered water pump that Guy suggested. We will install this pump in our well, which we dug last year and which still [...]
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June 22nd, 2009 at 4:46 am[...] Brumby Pump plans anyone? | Open Source Ecology [...]
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June 30th, 2009 at 10:35 pm[...] Brumby Pump plans anyone? | Open Source Ecology [...]
June 6th, 2009 at 1:07 pm
In an effort to crowd-source reverse-engineering the Brumby pump, I submitted a link to this post to the science subreddit.
Vote up the link, it will get more eyeballs!
June 6th, 2009 at 2:45 pm
This is an airlift pump. The Brumby site says that the submersion/lift ratio has to be at least 1/3. Wikipedia says 1/2. In other words, if your water table is 50 feet down, you have to drill down to between 75 feet (1/3) and 100 feet (1/2).
Bubbly water is lighter than non-bubbly. If your bubbly water is half air, it weighs half as much. A 100-foot column of half air, half water weighs as much as a 50-foot column of water. So, if you introduce 50% air into the bottom of a vertical tube 100 feet long standing in 50 feet of water, the bubbly water will rise to the top.
The trick is that you have to drill down an extra 50% to 100%, which means that your well costs an extra 50% to 100% to dig.
June 6th, 2009 at 3:27 pm
hmm, but since your using pressurised air, wouldn’t it work to run a motor on that air? Imagine just taking a cheap pneumatic drill or other rotating pneumatic tool and then combining it with a conventional water pump, strong enough to pump water 20 or whatever meters up?
June 6th, 2009 at 10:47 pm
A user from reddit.com submitted this link:
http://www.airwellpumps.com/HowDoesItWork.aspx
June 7th, 2009 at 4:50 pm
Cool, thanks! I’ll be putting ours together today.
June 8th, 2009 at 3:43 am
Thats simple, just realized you’d probably get power tool oil in the water using my idea :-p
Drilling double the distance would have a disastrous impact on cost im my area, its something like 100 EUR per meter (rocks) and you need to go about 50-75 meters down.
Avoiding going another 50 meters down will motivate quite an expensive pump
June 8th, 2009 at 10:21 pm
Jeremy will post a design of the pump we came up with. We think we have a simple design worked out, based on our experience and Brittany’s build of the Hydromissions.com pump cylinder (http://openfarmtech.org/weblog/?p=289). We don’t think this design requires the extra depth of the bore hole. This way, there is no need for deep immersion of the pump body. Stay tuned for the design, plus testing in the next few days.
June 24th, 2009 at 11:35 am
Have you posted your design yet on the air pump?
June 25th, 2009 at 11:16 am
Yep, the basic design so far is here: http://openfarmtech.org/index.php?title=Compressed_Air_Water_Pump
We’re still working on the timer circuit for the solenoid valve. We also need to source a cheaper valve.
June 26th, 2009 at 6:20 am
Guys
You are aware that you could be infringing our patents here, right?
You can go and spend hundreds of hours working out a way to copy our pumps, potentially get yourself in trouble and still only have a half-baked example.
There is lot more in the pumps than may meet the eye.
I’m sure you can spend your time more productively than to build an inferior version of a pump, that you could have simply bought and installed in a few minutes.
June 26th, 2009 at 10:19 am
Hi Tom,
We believe our pump is different from your design, but please send us your patents so we can make sure. .pdf scans will be fine.
Thanks, take care.
December 11th, 2009 at 7:47 am
With regard to the main question at the top of this page as to whether or not anyone has, or is willing to provide details of the Brumby Pump construction and internals I would like to add this:
The Brumby pump is a patented design and if we find anyone who is attempting to copy this design or anyone who in any way is attempting to aid those seeking to copy this design any such persons WILL be prosectued to fullest extent of the law.
Rob White.
Brumby Pumps UK.
April 29th, 2010 at 10:05 am
In the USA a patent can be copied, but for testing and prototyping only. Any and all copies may not be sold or marketed. The copies you build also can not be given or traded away. The testing or prototype copy must be disassembled or destroyed after the test. You may modify the original patented item so it is a whole new thing then no patent problems exist. So I suggest you do a longevity durability test of a prototype.
April 29th, 2010 at 10:18 am
To build a pump similar to the Brumby pump,first build a standard Airlift pump note that the Airlift patent has expired, I checked. Then cap the bottom of the pump and install a one-way foot valve at the bottom and a one-way valve in the water up pipe. Review the standard fish tank airlift pump on the internet,it is basically a PVC pipe inside a PVC pipe, you modify by adding two check valves. I have made my own drawings from some expired patents, but still testing.
May 23rd, 2010 at 9:26 am
Katie,
Is the patent for Brumby Pump a UK or USA patent? I don’t find anything searching Google for a Brumby Pump patent.
I did see a patent for a Hydraulic Elevator.
I am very interested in building these pumps and using them on my farm and having them available as kits for others to build.
I have also located 12VDC air solenoids that handle up to 115psi for more shallow depths. My wells are 25-30 feet and I figure 40-60 psi would work pretty good.
I have begun collecting parts to build a test unit and hope to have something up and running this summer.
Thanks for that drawing.
May 25th, 2010 at 7:10 am
Some additional research shows that the Feri pump:
http://www.feripumps.com.au/
is darn near identical to Brumby. Or maybe its’ the other way around.
http://www.southcoastwater.co.uk/brumby-pumps.html
Interesting that sites are showing a picture of both pumps and it appears to be the same pump, just different names.
June 15th, 2010 at 1:54 pm
If you do a patenr search on “gas lift pump” there are numerous patents which look similar to the Brumby design ie US patents 3,894,814 4,579,511 and 2010/0051288. The patent application that Brumby are refering to could be australian pat application 2009902513 by Molloy, Anthony John