History of the trompe on French Wikipedia (very detailed)

[Brian in Victoria BC]

My "pulser pump" was considered by many people to be "fake" in the early 2000's and they would routinely get quite upset and call me a liar on the internet. Partly because nobody had a clue what a trompe was. (A pulser pump is just a mini trompe providing the air for a mini airlift pump, and people struggled with the concept of a water pump with no moving parts). So, I went to english wikipedia and created the airlift pump and trompe "stubs" and asked for other (with access to university libraries) to provide the references. Within about a week, both pages were live with references! I was impressed! But they never really evolved. And the airlift pump page was taken over to some extent, by the inventor of the "geyser Pump" to direct people to his product. The French trompe page is far more interesting. It has 32 pictures! It has a superb history of the trompe, from the persian water bellows around 300 AD to Genoa around 1600 AD, then the Catalan forge, and later the giant underground trompes of the late 1800's. So yeah, check it out. I believe that mini Trompes should return, as a device to remove gasses and sediment from rivers. I will explain the why and the how if there are replies to the thread. Web browsers convert this French wikipedia link to English very well!

 

[Baluncore]

A high siphon will "cold boil" the dissolved CO₂ out of the water at the crest. That can block the liquid flow through the siphon. Keeping the siphon cool, out of direct sunlight, should maximise the height by reducing the partial pressure of CO₂ and of H₂O at the crest.

A trompe operates on the other side of atmospheric pressure. It tends to maximise the atmospheric gasses dissolved in the water. That is a benefit for furnace operation, which might otherwise, be extinguished by the CO₂ extracted from the water. The same is true of an inverted siphon that has no atmospheric limit on height.

I would like some way to operate a multi-stage tromp, to get higher pressure than one head of water. The problem comes in the reduction in hydrostatic pressure while returning the water to the top of the hill. Must I use one stage only, with brine, drilling mud, or Hg, as the fluid?

 

[Brian in Victoria BC]

I actually ran a high siphon in a stream. It wasn't very high, just 6 ft. The key difference from a regular syphon is that I was letting air in at the top so it had bubbles going down in the exit water. That meant that gas exchange was occurring all the way down the exit pipe. It's a long time ago, it was probably 3 inch diameter inch plastic pipes. with an 2 L joins at the top and a tube up there at the very top to let in air. I think it had a one ft head. (might have been a bit more). The idea was to make a vacuum pump. I primed it with a floor bicycle pump (with the valve turned the wrong way). I couldn't make a float valve inside it up top to let in air, so I had the air pipe go down to beside where the exit water came out. When the water started flowing, and speeded up, it raised up the water level at the exit and the water rising opened up a valve there, let in some air, it went in and air bubbles started coming down and it slowed down the water, which tightened the valve and let in less air. Eventually it found its happy speed. I only ran it a little because it was hard to set up and I couldn't use it for anything. Partial vacuum needs very strong containers! It took quite a bit of effort to pump out air to start it too. It also used to "shake" when it was running. I guess from the bubbles going from side to side. Maybe something like that, about 10 ft high, might work for sucking the volatile gases out of water? (There are a whole lot of smelly gasses in water. Especially nowadays, and much of them would exit within the air bubbles.) I didn't continue with my vacuum pump for several reasons. One was that it might suck oxygen out of the water. Another was that it might kill any fish or water creatures that got sucked in the intake. Blown up from the inside from any air or swim bladders in their bodies. Etc. I might insert a diagram if I am allowed to do so later.