great minds of AO, who knows about water pumps?

[MoeMag]

this reminds me of an episode of dirty jobs where they used a type algae to make some medication....

Oh we do too. There are some very interesting pharmacutical grade bugs that we toy around with.

Thats the only other industry that I think has as much money behind it as oil. So why not.

[thahouse]

IMO, if you went the pump route, your best bet would be to get a custom built peristaltic pump to accommodate the load. Granted this would cause you to rethink the whole initial gravity drop, but would be most effective i would believe.

I use this pump religiously when i am doing test method validations for aqueous microbiology.

[MoeMag]

IMO, if you went the pump route, your best bet would be to get a custom built peristaltic pump to accommodate the load. Granted this would cause you to rethink the whole initial gravity drop, but would be most effective i would believe.

I use this pump religiously when i am doing test method validations for aqueous microbiology.

Well check that gnarlyness out.

Thats what they used for blood transfusions.



A E-cookie for you!

[thahouse]

Hope that works though. If you get the right design built, it should work phenomenally. Yes, you are right on the blood transfusion aspect...Used to use them when i worked in hematology and realized old faithful would be great for aqueous movement for one of the projects i did a while back.

Thanks for the e-cookie How did you know i liked oatmeal chocolate chip :P

[ScatterPlot]

I had thought peristaltic at first as well, but you mentioned you can't crush them. I don't have any real-world experience with them but I would think the potential for crushing could be rather high.

Going along with the 'water wheel' idea, you don't have to have it be an actual wheel. If you have all these test tubes that need the algae out of them this idea would work in a very scalable way-

Instead of test tubes make them continuous lengths of clear, flexible tubing (or a straight piece with elbows at the ends for adding/removing things, and flexible lines attached to those) and have those flexible lines attached to whatever cooling doohickey you want, in the same fashion. When it comes time to dump from one chamber to another, just elevate the "from" tank to be higher than the "to" tank. Having tubes connected on the top would allow for a complete cycle to exist so you don't have air bubbles going back and forth through the system as well. Now if this is needed to be a continuous cycle then that might not work so well, but depending on how fast the algae settle it might work if you shifted the levels often enough (again, I don't know how long you need each piece to be at each level).


If you did want something continuously moving, just make an octagon (or whatever shape you would like) out of straight segments of tube, and put flexible hoses connecting them- the staggered polygonal shape will stir it up so they won't settle at the bottom, and the entire device doesn't have to be custom made into a complicated finned wheel shape, which you are right would be very expensive.

[JesseB]

why not a simple plunger type pump? works the same as a syringe.

or are you talking about moving a high volume?

[FreakBaller12]

although I have no solution for you.
Make sure when you get rich and famous that you mention AO for the solution to your question!