PapiJuan56
New Member
Aloha All,
I would like to share my DIY airlift that I made out of off-the-shelf Home Depot or Lowe’s parts. What is standard in my facility is 1 inch for the airlift systems. Before, we would 3D printed our airlift, but we kept having to do maintenance on them as they were always leaking and breaking. 3D printed parts are not really ideal for pressurized systems, especially with the salt in Hawaii. Everything rusts or goes brittle here quickly. I didn't want to spend money on an actual PVC airlift as some that I've seen have been over $ 100. One day, I was walking by the PVC fittings section at Lowe’s, and I saw some compression tees. And like I said, I am an inventor/modifier, haha. I was looking at them, realizing I haven't really used compression fittings much besides 1/2 or smaller compression fittings. I thought to myself, "I wonder if the 1 inch PVC pipe will complete through a 1 inch compression tee?” I grabbed a 1 inch piece, and lo and behold, it did. Right there, I knew I had my airlift design that would be solid and require minimal work and maintenance.
Now, we used these airlifts all over our farm for transferring, overflow , flow-through, and density monitoring systems. I connect the airlift to the aeration system. For our vessels, we prefer to have minimal or nothing inside our actual tanks besides our algae. For the flow-through system, we mount the airlift on the exterior with a flow-through PVC trombone assembly, and that is how we adjust our water level. We have a lot of completely closed systems, so this works great for overflow and water levels. We like to use them as well for transferring instead of using pumps.
I attached some photos. I slide the 1-inch PVC all the way through and with the compression couplings make it seal tight. Before I put the one-inch pipe through, I drill about 20 holes with a 3D-printed jig. I use the smallest drill bit size in a Dremel kit, 1/32. Then I use an adapter bushing to add my 1/4 tubing that splices off my aeration to the tanks. It works great and it is heavy-duty. We have been using them for a couple of years with no real wear or tear. This style can be used with any PVC size: 1/2 compression tee with 1/2 pipe, 2-inch compression tee with 2-inch pipe. I have tried all the way to 2 1/2 PVC.
At my algae farm, I try to make everything myself by hand. I like to look at things that exist and figure out what else I could use and modify to work like something I've seen.
I would like to share my DIY airlift that I made out of off-the-shelf Home Depot or Lowe’s parts. What is standard in my facility is 1 inch for the airlift systems. Before, we would 3D printed our airlift, but we kept having to do maintenance on them as they were always leaking and breaking. 3D printed parts are not really ideal for pressurized systems, especially with the salt in Hawaii. Everything rusts or goes brittle here quickly. I didn't want to spend money on an actual PVC airlift as some that I've seen have been over $ 100. One day, I was walking by the PVC fittings section at Lowe’s, and I saw some compression tees. And like I said, I am an inventor/modifier, haha. I was looking at them, realizing I haven't really used compression fittings much besides 1/2 or smaller compression fittings. I thought to myself, "I wonder if the 1 inch PVC pipe will complete through a 1 inch compression tee?” I grabbed a 1 inch piece, and lo and behold, it did. Right there, I knew I had my airlift design that would be solid and require minimal work and maintenance.
Now, we used these airlifts all over our farm for transferring, overflow , flow-through, and density monitoring systems. I connect the airlift to the aeration system. For our vessels, we prefer to have minimal or nothing inside our actual tanks besides our algae. For the flow-through system, we mount the airlift on the exterior with a flow-through PVC trombone assembly, and that is how we adjust our water level. We have a lot of completely closed systems, so this works great for overflow and water levels. We like to use them as well for transferring instead of using pumps.
I attached some photos. I slide the 1-inch PVC all the way through and with the compression couplings make it seal tight. Before I put the one-inch pipe through, I drill about 20 holes with a 3D-printed jig. I use the smallest drill bit size in a Dremel kit, 1/32. Then I use an adapter bushing to add my 1/4 tubing that splices off my aeration to the tanks. It works great and it is heavy-duty. We have been using them for a couple of years with no real wear or tear. This style can be used with any PVC size: 1/2 compression tee with 1/2 pipe, 2-inch compression tee with 2-inch pipe. I have tried all the way to 2 1/2 PVC.
At my algae farm, I try to make everything myself by hand. I like to look at things that exist and figure out what else I could use and modify to work like something I've seen.
