Solar Powered Water Pump - Sterling Engine?

[EEpennstate]

Hello everyone,

My and my team have been assigned an engineering project which involves sending a prototype of a solar-powered submersible water pump to senegal for agricultural/irrigation use, and I thought I would ask the professionals for some guidance.
These are the specifications/dimensions of the well that were given:
well dimensions - senegal

I posted this here because since we are on a limited budget we are not able to purchase PV cells to power the pump, so we did some research and decided that the sterling cycle was very promising, but we were mainly focusing on gamma type sterling engines because they don't involve coaxial displacement and are easier to manufacture. I am asking you to kindly give us some guidance on what dimensions we would need for the engine to function and how we could use it to power the pump.

I have also attached our presentation to this post to get a full view of our project.
Your feedback and time is highly appreciated!

Thanks,
Ahmed Al Haddad

[Ian S C]

Ahmed, I would suggest that you investigate the Fluidine pump devised by Dr Colin west, it is written up in his book,"Liquid-piston Stirling Engines", published by Van Nostrand Reinhold Co of New York, USADr West was an engineer at AERE, Harwell.
A useful sized conventional Stirling Engine would entail an extensive engineering workshop, quite a bit of developement time, and a considerable sum of money(Thousands of dollars). Ian S C

[Ante]

Hi Ahmed

For your application if we assume that you have average 11suny hours and lifting height of 8.5m you need theoreticaly 110 W of power (whitout loses).
Pump that is nearest to your is this : http://www.tamera.org/index.php?id=886 this pump has 300W.

If you want fluidyne pump
http://www.google.hr/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=s ... Ig&cad=rja
but you will need serial connection of 3-4 pumps because of big head (8.5m)

Good luck
And salute
Ante

[fullofhotair]

Take a look at the airlift water pump. http://youtu.be/kSvssx2jfX4 The pluses for this pump are easy to build,very efficent,you dont need to drill a large well hole,it can work at night even though its a solar pump because it stores energy in the air tank not expensive batteries. A small stirling engine could run a small air pump.If you used a large tank and pumped it up to a lower pressure it wouldnt stress out the low torque stirling engine.

[EEpennstate]

Ahmed, I would suggest that you investigate the Fluidine pump devised by Dr Colin west, it is written up in his book,"Liquid-piston Stirling Engines", published by Van Nostrand Reinhold Co of New York, USADr West was an engineer at AERE, Harwell.
A useful sized conventional Stirling Engine would entail an extensive engineering workshop, quite a bit of developement time, and a considerable sum of money(Thousands of dollars). Ian S C

Thanks for the fast response, but in our case we just need to create a prototype which can function (so that we can submit these CAD drawings/Plans to Senegal), we do not have the skills or experience to actually manufacture a life-sized sterling engine but we will make a miniature pump to demonstrate that it is functional, and we are currently doing some research to try and figure out which would be more feasible to use, a fluidyne pump or your original gamma sterling engine.

[EEpennstate]

Take a look at the airlift water pump. http://youtu.be/kSvssx2jfX4 The pluses for this pump are easy to build,very efficent,you dont need to drill a large well hole,it can work at night even though its a solar pump because it stores energy in the air tank not expensive batteries. A small stirling engine could run a small air pump.If you used a large tank and pumped it up to a lower pressure it wouldnt stress out the low torque stirling engine.

I looked at the airlift water pump video on Youtube and I think it is very interesting, but, would we not require electricity to power it? We are relying solely on solar power to generate energy due to costs, so we were thinking about a using a solar thermal collector to power the pump via the engine/fluidyne? example: http://www.linux-host.org/energy/sstir3.gif

http://www.machine-history.com/sites/de ... lector.jpg

[EEpennstate]

Hi Ahmed

For your application if we assume that you have average 11suny hours and lifting height of 8.5m you need theoreticaly 110 W of power (whitout loses).
Pump that is nearest to your is this : http://www.tamera.org/index.php?id=886 this pump has 300W.

If you want fluidyne pump
http://www.google.hr/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=s ... Ig&cad=rja
but you will need serial connection of 3-4 pumps because of big head (8.5m)

Good luck
And salute
Ante

This is great! Thank you so much, I will definitely read more about the "SunPulse Water and Spring Rebound Inertia Pump" but what you personally recommend we use in our case, fluidyne? (no electricity, strictly thermal, minimum costs) ?

Kind regards,
Ahmed Al Haddad

[Ante]

This is great! Thank you so much, I will definitely read more about the "SunPulse Water and Spring Rebound Inertia Pump" but what you personally recommend we use in our case, fluidyne? (no electricity, strictly thermal, minimum costs) ?

Kind regards,
Ahmed Al Haddad

On your place I would try to make some prototype of fluidyne (cheap and simple). I don't have experience with fluidyne, and problem you can see is that head of fluidyne pump is in function of temperature diference, so number of pumps depends of way how good you focus sun light. If you can not produce high temperature make something like SunPulse but put pump in bottom of well to reduce suction height.

That is only my opinion :)
Salute, Ante

[Ian S C]

Acording to the information supplied in the web site on the Fluidine Pump a single stage pump shoul operate to 8-9 m, and a two stage pump to 16 m, and a pump with a bore of 150 mm will produce 300watts, I'v forgotten the gal/cubic metre per hour/day. To build a Fluidine, you need to be more a plumber than mechanic. Ian S C

[fullofhotair]

No with the airlift pump you don’t need electricity. You could use an old small electric pump with a burnt out electric motor, cheap. Replace the electric motor with your new stirling engine. A larger flywheel, also the pulley for the belt to the air pump would put less stress on the stirling. If you set the air pump to go off at lower pressure but used a larger air tank, this would also lessen the stress on the stirling engine. A used large propane tank would work for the air tank, also, cheap. Your best set up for a solar collector is a double trough, sheet metal, parabola. You can’t use a single trough because it focuses on a plane not a point. The double trough focuses to a point. This has 2 advantages. First you should be able to find sheet aluminum in country, then polish it out. Second the double trough is far easier to build than is a parabolic dish. I put all the U Tube link below to further explain it. There is all kind of Do it yourself examples of airlift pumps, basically PVC pipe and a hollow ball for a valve shut off.
wims.unice.fr/xiao/solar/diy-en.pdf
http://youtu.be/jL_mz-Z3rq0
http://youtu.be/5pdqDQwehlk
http://youtu.be/44cuKCCzUwk

[fullofhotair]

Dont forget to pass the cold water you pump through the cold side of your stirling engine.It will make it perfom better. http://youtu.be/BpLVdilfmCQ