Geyser pump
Masao Kondo has applied for a US patent for a new type of airlift
pump called a geyser pump. He has also made parts which could be used
to convert an airlift pump into one of his geyser pumps.Seems he uses
intermittent plug flow to get greater efficiency. (When an airlift
pump first starts, there is a long pulse of solid water (or 2 or 3)
before it settles into typical fizzy water flow). It seems that the
patent applies to that form of flow and a way of producing it all the
time as the pump works. The patent claims that this type of flow is
more efficient. You can see the patent at
http://www.malibuwater.com/GeyserPumpPatent.html
I have been saying for years that plug flow is probably more
efficient and this commercial interest in a similar process validates
my results to some extent. By the way, I made geysers powered by the
pulser pump years ago (just as a possible entertainment use). They
used a chamber with a hole in it to deliver water slowly, so that
when the geyser released its pressure, there was a burst of water and
then spray (pretend steam) like in a real geyser. (I am not claiming
prior infringement of the patent ).
Just thought models of old faithful might be interesting.
In the past, I have also made the airlift section of the pulser pump
with a chamber partway up the pipe to the user. It had a kind of
syphon valve in it and worked a bit like a geyser for the final 6 ft
lift to the user. (I did a lot of testing but for me the extra
efficiency wasnt worth the complication).
It is also worth noticing that changing the design of the air
separation chamber in a pulser pump can produce shorter or longer
pulses of water (the patented geyser effect?) I wish Masao Kondo well
with his enterprise but I hope it does not slow the adoption of
pulser pumps (which predate it by over a decade) and which first
appeared in magazines in 1989. I also hope that I have outlined
enough uses for it to prevent the patenting of specific parts and
evolutionary improvements to specific parts of the device. It would
be a real shame if patents prevented people from making pulser pumps
(or making them better).
Brian White