32 lines
5.2 KiB
HTML
32 lines
5.2 KiB
HTML
<div id="airlift" class="page">
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<h1>Air Lifts</h1> <span style="font-size: smaller; font-weight: 800;">A great way to add oxygen to water, and they can even be used to lift water like a pump.</span>
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<p>Air, being lighter than water, will rapidly rise when injected at the bottom of a tank. Air lifts capitalize on this by placing the air in a narrow vertical tube in a tank of water, allowing the rising air to push the water up the sides of the pipe and out the top. Air lifts are often used for aerating fish tank and grow tank water because they are very efficient. Just like bubblers and fountains, air lifts rely on breaking the surface tension of the water to add oxygen. Unlike a fountain, they don't spray water very far, or in ways that will add a lot of water to the air resulting in humidity and water loss in your system. Unlike bubblers they don't take a lot of pressure to produce a good amount of oxygenated water. They also don't produce a lot of back pressure on the air pump, meaning that the pump will be more efficient and the diaphrams will last longer. As a bonus, air lifts are designed to have no problem moving solids and have no moving parts, so they rarely if ever clog, and never wear out, unlike impeller pumps and air stones. Based on some experimentation, I have found that increasing the surface of the pipe relative to the area inside the pipe does appear to produce a slightly better result, but likely isn't worth the effort of flattening pipe.</p>
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<p>Using an air lift in place of a water pump will oxygenate your water and move it at the same time. Getting the water very far above the water line does require a lot of effort since you have to essentially create a gyser effect where the air builds up and then releases all at once. Air lifts appear to be limited to about 3x the water depth in pumping height. You can double the water height relatively easily and still move a fair amount of water. Make sure you add a muffler where the water and air exit since it can be quite noisy. A narrowed pipe with holes drilled randomly along the bottom and placed horizontally so the water and air come out the holes seems to work pretty well. I simply heated the end of the pipe and crimped it to serve as an end cap.</p>
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<div class="instructions">
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<h2>Photos & Instructions - Building A Simple Air Lift</h2>
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<img src='ap/images/AirLift1_v1.jpg' class="shadow" style="height: 253px; width: 450px; display: block; margin: 10px auto 0 auto;"/>
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<p style="clear:both;">This image shows an 8' HDPE (High Density Polyethylene) tank with a 2' depth that is being aerated by a Matala HK40LP pump (the air pump is actually aerating 2 of these tanks) using two quad packs of air lifts. This appears to work quite a lot better than four large (2" length 1" diameter) air stones. The plants were not growing until I added the air lifts and removed the stones. I had a similar experience in a previous floating bed, so I wanted to duplicate the experiment.</p>
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<p style="clear:both;"><img src='ap/images/AirLift2_v1.jpg' class="shadow" style="height: 141px; width: 250px; float: left; margin: 0 10px 0 0;"/>A close up of the lift pipes and the fork I am using to keep it upright. The fork is just a bit of pine cut with a table saw and a band saw to have a slot. The lift is made of 1/2" electrical pvc and four 90 degree pieces.</p>
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<p style="clear:both;"><img src='ap/images/AirLift3_v1.jpg' class="shadow" style="width: 150px; height: 266px; float: left; margin: 0 10px 0 0;"/>This shows the bottom of the lift pipes. You can see that I cut the bottoms on roughly a 45 degree angle, and I drilled a hole large enough for 1/4" drip line just above the cut. I suggest using the better drip line sold in large rolls by your neighborhood hardware store since you will use quite a lot of it, and you'd prefer it be flexible. The band you see holding the pipes together is a 1/4" wide piece of 2" electrical pvc pipe. I used a heat gun (harbor frieght has a nice one that is also easy to repair) to heat it until flexible (keep moving the gun to keep from burning the pvc), then I placed it over the pipe and used a wet towel to cool it down.</p>
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<p style="clear:both;"><img src='ap/images/AirLift4_v1.jpg' class="shadow" style="width: 150px; height: 266px; float: left; margin: 0 10px 0 0;"/>Here is the whole air lift assembly, including the upper band. The upper band is made from a 3" electrical pipe piece added in the same way as the bottom 2" band.</p>
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<p style="clear:both;"><img src='ap/images/AirLift5_v1.jpg' class="shadow" style="width: 150px; height: 266px; float: left; margin: 0 10px 0 0;"/>These two air lifts will be installed in a 5' deep weld wire tank to replace some large EPDM bubblers. A couple more of these and the 6000 gallon tank may be better aerated with just one Matala HK40LP instead of the three I am using now.</p>
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<div style="clear: both;"></div>
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</div>
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<div class="instructions">
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<h2>Photos & Instructions - Building A Pumping Air Lift</h2>
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<p>I will need some more photos to finish this part of the page. Check back soon please.</p>
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