Turbine to drive a pump - perpetual motion ;-)

[Ed Sirett]

Try looking up ITDG on the web.

[Andy Dingley]

Anecdotally no, but doing the same with concrete is supposed to work.

[Sigvaldi Eggertsson]

Yes, similar to the UK.

[Steve Firth]

Err yes in fact. I can't recall the name of the maker unfortunately but the farm I used to live on in Derbyshire had exactly this arrangement. In a steep valley below the farm was a fast flowing stream that was used to turn a small turbine connected to a pump. The pump operated 24/7 pushing a trickle of water (relative to the flow of the stream) uphill to a holding tank. The water was used for yard washing and for the animals.

[Steve Firth]

Is that 150 metres away combined horizontal and vertical or 150 metres above? FWIW the system we had in Derbyshire lifted water about 15-20 metres vertically. And did pump it a huge distance sideways. It didn't use a hydraulic ram, the pump was IIRC a centrifugal unit, although it may have been a good old fashioned piston. It's so long since I saw the thing I really can't recall the details well. Stone shed with a thing in it about the size of a Dyson connected to a Peltier wheel that was about the size of a large lorry tyre. The whole gubbins was mounted vertically and pumped the water through galvanised iron tube. The water into the turbine came through a very large tube either 6 or 8 inches diameter and this took the water from much higher up the valley. I can't recall the head of water but it could have been 100 to 200 ft given the steepness of the hill.

[Andy Dingley]

Presumably a Pelton wheel, unless you were making icecubes with it.

Even so, what was the input head ? Peltons normally need the sort of head that requires a dam or waterfall, not just a stream

150m of vertical head would be excessive for a hydraulic ram. It has been done, but it's about the limit for a good one and you'd be really pushing it to make it work on your first.

Mine lifted about 10m with almost no input head. The eventual plan was to re-site it lower, gaining about 5m more input head (mainly so it didn't dry out in Summer) and a total lift of 15m.

[Steve Firth]

Oh yes, ta. Too long working on electronics has given me word blindness.

As I said earlier I think it was in the order of 100 to 250 ft. The input was via a large diameter cast iron pipe that ran up the valley from the pumping station. At the inlet there was just a simple concrete box that some of the stream was diverted into - no storage capacity. So water ran into the box then down the pipe and the head was simply the difference between the pipe inlet and outlet.

[N. Thornton]

I wouldnt use a ram for 2 reasons. The main one is that it pumps water from the downstream, when the OP wants a different water source pumped. Secondly they dont capture much of the available energy.

I would look more to something like the water balanced railway at CAT. Basically a loop of cable like a ski lift, with containers hanging on it, or riding on tracks. Fill one at the top with water and it pulls the cable round the loop, lifting half a tank of water frmo bottom to top. Advantages over the ram are that the pumping and pumped streams can be easily separated, and I would expect much greater energy capture.

Separate the 2 water streams eg by using double containers, the bigger half for downstram, the smaller half for upstream.

NT

[Steve Firth]

There's a useful description plus tables for calculating the lift and flow that can be achieved at