Remote Living > Water
Solar Powered Pond Aerator
Mary B:
Lots pf 12 and 24 volt air compressor pond pumps here http://www.aquariumwholesaleshop.com/index.php?main_page=index&cPath=114_95&zenid=97f2473f981d7f67cd5c0bbb9a3ea6ea
george65:
One does not need an air pump for aeration.
For many years now I have used a regular water pump to Dry the Veg oil I process for my Vehicle.
The processor is an inverted 44 gallon drum with the 2" bung tapped and going to the pump. The pump then has 2 outputs, one through a water filter and to clean the oil before returning it to the tank and the other outlet goes through a 1/4" nozzle back into the drum that contains the oil. The squirter fires the oil stream back into the drum which creates massive aeration, far more than any practical air pump would do. The bubbling takes away the moisture content in the oil ( veg oil is hygroscopic) and leaves the oil Dry.
I got the idea from watching the kids in the pool with the garden hose firing into the water and making bubbles come up like a spa. It definitely works because I can dry my oil to pass test standards in an hour when people spraying or using air pumps and stones can take days, literally.
On a hot, dry day the oil can be completely dry in as little as 20 Min. I have small fan sucking the air out of the drum ( air inlet opposite side) because it gets saturated and the fan has proved critically important. Obviously not needed for a pond application.
I use a 300W pump although I have used much larger but as long as it will fire the oil through the squirter at good pressure, the rest is just unused/ wasted power.
The same sort of thing would work with a pond. Just circulate the water back into itself under some pressure and create the bubbling and it would do a far better job than any air pump. No reason why multiple squirters could not be used spread out a bit as long as the pump had the grunt to drive them.
I can't estimate how much air my setup supplies but a mate had the biggest ( and most exy) air pump for aquariums he could get and it was nothing on the aeration my system provided. He saw what I was doing and dismayed bought a cheap pump and did the same and saved himself days drying his 1000L batches of Biodiesel.
Just to be clear, this is not spraying the water, it's a concentrated stream back into the liquid that breaks the surface tension and pulls the air down with the liquid being squirted in. I found some of the plastic nozzles I was using made the stream a bit too smooth so an object, preferably a bit rough and jagged, twisted into the nozzle so as to make the outside of the stream a bit rough works best as that tears up the surface tension better and allows for more air to be introduced.
From what I have seen, water pumps are a lot cheaper and easier to get than air pumps. Oily friends and I have used the cheap QB style Chinese water pumps and they work really well. They are a fraction of the price of brand name pumps so when they finally die, which can take a long time in my experience, you just replace them and don't worry. If someone feels compelled to by a brand name, they will work every bit as good.
If one had an irrigation pump that was Petrol or Diesel powered, it could do this job as well.
I have seen pumped water being used to aerate ponds and lakes at golf courses and resorts as well.
Bruce S:
george65
How big of a pond are you needing to aerate?
That unit that dnix71 posted about may look smallish, but they can do pretty good. I see them around our place, in yards with pools as big as 16 feet dia.
OperaHouse:
The ones I see on youtube are lakes! Who knew nature needed life support. There are also many videos there showing how to connect a solar panel directly to an inverter. I don't know why people with no idea what they are doing have to share this with everyone. II just got a 7 lpm micro water pump for the camp hot water system for $15. Quite impressed with its construction. I have two tanks and if one tank gets up to temp, I can't get enough dump load with one element. With this I will be able to circulate hot water to the cooler tank. Nice pump for a greenhouse, easy to clean.
Bruce S:
I like the cute little ones the odd-lot stores sell for about $15USD that have pretty RGB colors :P
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