Airlift pumps are sometimes used in aquaponics and hydroponics. The nice thing about them is that the air pump can be elsewhere, they are very simple while the height that it pumps to is highly variable depending on the tube and pipe size that you use. Potentially you could irrigate a wall of plants with the water dripping down and recirculating up again with the airlift pump. Or just use the airlift pump to move water one or 2 ft up from one tank to another. And you can use one air pump to do several things at the same time. A problem is that airlift pumps are not well characterized. I'm planning over time to measure and detail the characteristics and pipes to use under different conditions. I've worked with little tubes before, (these can pump higher than the big pipes) and the last stuff I did was pumping to 7 ft or more high (not much interest in that though because it is fairly slow) and today, I tested 5/8 inch pipe and 3/4 inch pipe (17 mm and 20 mm internal diameter) using 14 liters per minute of air and found that the 17 mm vastly outperformed the 20 mm pipe pumping to 2 ft high. It pumped 150 liters per hour of of water as opposed to 120 or less with the larger pipe. [video=youtube;pS1cm3DjRSM]
[/video] I am a stone mason, and weather is too cold for work right now so I can test more pipes and depths over the next couple of days if people are interested. My air pump has 4 outlets so I can output 14 lpm, 10.5 lpm, 7 lpm and 3.5 lpm if anyone is interested in the numbers. Right now I am constrained to 32 inches submergence (my air pump can do 9 ft deep) If anyone wants me to test something much higher in the submergence range, I can probably do 6 ft submergence with a few days notice. Hope my info helps people. Thanks Brian White Victoria BC. (PS. I have never smoked or eaten weed)
