Air compressing with the Wing'd mills

1.Simultaneous air compressing to same pressure at the windmill as the pumped water

 

When the Wing'd mills are pumping water a distance horizontally either ashore and/or overland, it reduces the flow friction in the pipeline to smoothout the pump pulses with an air cushion. The main complication with standard air chambers is the loss of air by absorption into the pressurised water, which requires airbags or diaphraghms or manual replenishment.The Flo’Pump has an inlet at the waterline top of the cylinder that snifts in air behind the  piston weight falling through the water to automatically replenish the  built-in air and valve chamber above  the cylinder. Excess compressed air can be tapped for a secondary use, normally aeration of the pond bottom. If the Flutterwell is also pumping through a pipeline a snifter valve below a check valve entry into a simple bag-less air chamber at the wellhead  snifts  air  as the watercolumn regresses on the downstroke of the PipePump. This gives output air to water in a 1/3 nominal (atmospheric) ratio.

 

2. Dedicated Air Compressing with additional battery charging

 

This design is based on the Honda 50cc motorcycle engine Its standard tierod cylinder and head mounting makes it easy to extend the cylinder with the high pressure (HP) valve head, and then a cored block for the small diameter high pressure cylinder, then a normal block for the LP cylinder and finally the LP head. The most difficult part is attaching the extension piston rods to the top of the original delicate aluminum piston. (sans oil rings).

The HP and LP pistons are interconnected by a central rod and used the standard cup seals. However the cup dead space was filled with plastic plug to minimise the knocking and jamming from minor bottoming out for the efiiceint minimum dead air space. The cam chain is rerouted to directly drive the engine oil pump and an oil path created to the high side of the top LP cylinder just under the cup lip BDC.

The previous experience was that standard compressor reed valves had to be adjusted most carefully to minimise high static leaking. Presumably they are demanded by the high rpms and temperature buildup of standard compressors. Here with intermittent operation at lower peak rpm and the certainty of good cooling in the wind, and finally the intercooling, the temperature should stay below 300F and the tolerance of high temperature if not standard O-ring seals. These were used on the seats of all 4 valves, 3 of which were sprung brass sliders in the solid aluminum heads with only the input HP valve remaining as a leaf  because of space constraints.

The cylinders were separately bench tested and these valves developed to achieve very low static leaking. Nonetheless in the assembled unit the Intercooler loses static pressure to the engine space by leaking around the HP piston cup. To minimise this loss of air in intermittent operation the intercooler has to be optimised for high heat transfer but low internal volume and low flow friction using parallel connection of several fine bore copper tubes. The standard crankshaft seal in the engine will not stand significant pressurisation.

In 2005 an alternator was tested directly connected to this stub of the crankshaft and heavy pulses of current delivered at 12v with no additional noise. In fact the principal noise are the compressor strokes, so proving that even a spur gear train in an enclosed oil bath is much quieter than the previous external ring gear driving a ratcheting pinion on the alternator. However now the alternator inertia is tapped by the main compressor load as well, so the alternator delivered voltage and power are both reduced. Without electronic load switching and just ordinary voltage regulation, an alternator is a constant power load and so cannot be primary for the Wing'd Mills.