I have a unique piece of land that has a 100 year old cistern on top of a waterfall. At some point I will re-establish the pipe and use the ~50' of head for power generation via a pelton wheel at the bottom. I am in no rush for power in the form of electricity since there is no dwelling on the property and I cann't justify replacing batteries every couple years.
However, we often camp on land and do heavy crafts (chain saw rustic furniture etc). It occurs to me that I can put a flow over wheel adjacent to the cistern and use it to drive an air compressor. I can bury some tanks in the ground for compressed air storage. From a control standpoint I suspect the wheel would stall once the stored pressure reaches a limit or I can put an pressure relief valve that dumps air into the water once it gets up to ~120psi. The fish wouldn't mind additional airation of the water! The compressed air would drive all sorts of air tools. It would probably be quite slow to recover a depleted tank, but that doesn't matter. I can always add tanks, or go fishing. I'm thinking I can find an old-fashioned (oil type) compressor that normally would have a 1-3 hp electric motor for a drive. My flow over water wheel will be about 5' diameter with ~50 gpm flow so the hp I can deliver to the compressor will be a small fraction of what the compressor is capable of, however I will run it slower but with the same torque. The torque seems to be just a matter of pully diameters. I question if air compressors are in-efficient if run slowly. If you have experience with this I'd love to get some feedback. Forrest Robinson ------------------------ Yahoo! Groups Sponsor --------------------~--> $9.95 domain names from Yahoo!. Register anything. http://us.click.yahoo.com/J8kdrA/y20IAA/yQLSAA/FGYolB/TM --------------------------------------------------------------------~-> Does your company feature in the microhydro business directory at http://microhydropower.net/directory ? If not, please register free of charge and be exposed to the microhydro community world wide! NOTE: The advertisements in this email are added by Yahoogroups who provides us with free email group services. The microhydro-group does not endorse products or support the advertisements in any way. More information on micro hydropower at http://microhydropower.net To unsubscribe: send empty message to [EMAIL PROTECTED] Yahoo! Groups Links <*> To visit your group on the web, go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/microhydro/ <*> To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] <*> Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to: http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/
