Trompe, a First Summary

Figuer 1: A technical over view of  Charles Taylor Ragged Chute

Dutch Version 

Some time has passed and I have been reading up on the Trompe. Here are some of my findings and an overview of my sources. 

O my, people talk a lot and it a challenge to verify it all. This is of course sad because I am getting more and more convinced this is a way of generating green energy that should be taken serious.

First things first, building a Trompe as a private person that generates enough air pressure to actually make an big impact is hard. But don't let this discourage you! As my blog unfolds we will find out what this technique can really mean for us.

A Trompe Build by a Private Person

A nice example of someone who build a couple of Trompes (in the form of a Pulser pumps') and risked his live doing it, is Brian White. A Pulser pomp operates in much the same way as a Trump does, only it is dedicated to pumping water to a higher level. By digging a 8 feet (2.5 meter) deep hole on his land next to the creek running there he managed to pump water to the barn without any moving parts. So it is possible, yet he risked his life.

But what are the possibilities if you are not prepared to take such risks? can you build a Trompe that produces enough energy to do something meaningful?

To answer this question we first have to decide what is needed to build a Trompe, and then what this will give us.

What you Need to Build a Trompe.

For starters you need a constant flow of water to build a Tromp. This water has to have enough volume. The second thing you need is elevation, the inflow of the water and the outflow need to be on different heights (Figure 1: Operating head). A third requirement is a pressure room  (Figure 1: Separation Gallery) in which the water level is lower as the water level at the out flow. Of course this pressure room needs a inflow of water (Figure 1: Downcomer Shaft) and an outflow  (Figure 1: Riser Shaft). The last two things we need are a pipe through which we tap the compressed air for usages (Figure 1: Blast Pipe) and a pipe through which pressure can escape  (Figure 1: Relief Blow-off) if this pressure becomes to high. 

The shown drawing on top is the design of the most famous Trompe, the 330 feet (100 meter) deep Ragged Chute. This is not really attainable in most cases. A Trompe can be used in many ways though also on a much smaller scale. Here a couple of examples:

Modern design of a Trompe/HAC

Volume and Height Difference

This is where the challenges are for most of us mere mortals' who would like to have a Trompe. Well there is good news and bad news. The good news is that your stream doesn't need to be big to build a lot of pressure. The bad news is that the height of that pressure is solely decided by the vertical distance between the water level in the pressure room and the water level at the outflow.

The before mentioned Pulser pump of mister White used a hole of 8 feet (2.5 meter). His creek had a flow of about 260 liter of water every minute. The operating head of his pomp was only 4 feet (0.5 meter). Yet all these things are pretty hard (and the digging part dangerous) to get. 

Even though, the Pulser pomp ran for 15 years without any big maintenance. The pomp pumped 4 liters of water every minute to a height of 12 feet. Not bad if you ask me. Brain told me that if you would need water at 16 feet (5 meter) he would still get 1.5 liter every minute. this could make it worth your while. 

And it is worth mentioning that I am not sure if Brain's his design was the best we can achieve. Charles Taylor his design apparently was copied by some company in the US. During construction they misread his designs by as little as half a feet and the efficiency dropped dramatically. Ragged Chute is said to have had an efficiency of anywhere between 62% and 83%. Yet the wrongly build copy could only master 9%.

This just comes to show that you can build quite a bit of pressure that is always at your begging call, without having any moving parts if you do the research. 

For all the numbers I will have to do more research and I will get back to these in a later post. For now I will dive into the information I found so far and will see what is important for someone who wants to build a Trompe and what he can achieve by himself.

If you want to read up or know more, here are some interesting things I found so far.

• An article detailing how D. Millar reinvents the Trompe. His company adds the air through the use of mechanics.
• The website of the company that installs Tromps of big users.
• The BioMost Inc. Company installs Trompes to clean water from mines.

Show model of a mini Trompe by D Millar (starts at 0:54 sec, after a sneak peak of their big model).

• According to D. Millar the best article to learn about Tromps (Hydraulic Air Compressors, HAC's).
Trompe Wikipedia page.

Precentation about the use of a Trompe to get "cleaner" water.

• Presentation about the use of a Trompe to oxidize iron by removing CO2 from the water the PH rises and iron oxidizes faster. These are the sheets of belonging to the video shown above.
• A detailed description of the Victorian Mining company Trompe with numbers of Charles Taylor.
• A description of one of Brain White his Pulser Pumps. Brain worked with these pumps throughout the 80's and knows a lot about them. His description can help you a long way.
• You can find a lot of information about the Pulser pomp online, Appropedia has a lot of info for example. They also describe the science behind them. Brain is not to fond of their implementation though. He says there efficiency numbers are much to low because they made a critical error.
• A history of Charles Taylor
• An interesting discussion on a Permaculture forum about the Trompe, a lot of information. I have not been able to verify any of the info mentioned here, but still worth a read over. 

A youtuber who build his own Trompe using PVC pipes.

The story be hind the Ragged Chute HAC.

A tour around the HAC/Trompe at Ragged Chute in Cobalt Canada the most famous Trompe of Charles Taylor.

The decay of Ragged Chute filmed from a drone.