Farm Update 25-Aug-2016

Extreme hot Summar.  There is no rain for the past several months. No drop of water.

Water is being purchased.  6000 liters cost Rs. 1000/-

There is no availability of tracktor (water tanker) as the neighborhood guy has sold that.  Another one is busy.  Each sortie will bring 1000 liters. once the overhead tank is filled, the next trip has to be directly poured to the trees using hose. But the tracktor fellow has no time to wait.

This is the situation in the farm today.  Subbu's feedback is partially expected. But I never thought that the drought like situation will extend so much further without rain for so long.  Whereas it is monsoon in other parts of India and several areas in the north are submerged under water.

There  is absolutely no wind either.  It should be windy by now. It is not. That is the double problem.

Local climate has no correlation to global climate.  All weather reports can be trashed.

Subbu is planning to insert a hired submersible in the new borewell.  This will be electric pump and will come for "rent".  He is hoping to bring the current from neighbourhood well. Not so legal, but no choice. These are common among small farmers when they are pushed to corner.  I should find a renewable energy solution and stop this.

Compared to last year this year is better. Last year also was without water and we purchased for several days. Windpump was not working. This year, it is smooth. We also have 2nd bore with hand pump. I hope it is only few more weeks and we should get rains.

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On the vertical windmill initiative, Subbu reported he has made progress. But water problem is not allowing to concentrate.   He was sitting in welding shop when I called in near by village. They have sourced a tooth wheel of a lorry part and planning for a proper setup based on my diagram. I donot know more details and have sought for it.

My own initiative is also satisfactory.

I have started a facebook page for reporting the progress of Verticle windpump development and posting there. Not to repeat the story.  Meanwhile planning to start a separate page in this blog also when time permits.

https://www.facebook.com/groups/519702174896073/?ref=group_browse_new

Meanwhile I am running out of space in my apartment balcony. family is not allowing me to accumulate tools and trash items.  Therefore I have applied for permission with the Housing Society office to provide some space in terrace (7 story building). Let's hope.

Farm Update 16-Aug-2016

Extreme heat,  dry and hot winds is the short description of farm today.  It is months since rain has come in this area.  Though there is north east monsoon in India, this place is always dry. It is a rain shadow region.

Last year same time also it was very dry.  I had given some assignments to keep the team busy like painting the gates, putting fence around the pond etc.  We had to purchase water several days.  This year is much better, thanks to the continuous working of windpump. There is water to survive all trees.

Otherwise the bushes, grass and even  Prosophis Juliphora gives a burnt appearance in this heat.  Team is working hard to keep the plants alive.

Meanwhile baby steps towards fabricating a verticle windpump has started both at the farm and in my home here.  At the farm the handpump has been installed.  It has some repair works and getting done.  Back home, I spent some time yesterday in running between cycle shop, welding shop and automobile shops to match freewheel, identify iron pipe and purchase ball bearing respectively.

More on that as separate page.  Now for some visuals obtained from farm.

The nursary is dismantled and the pipes are to be used in the 2nd borewell to fix the handpump.

Suppotta trees surviving

Coconut tree is looking better. The other trees are stunted for lack of water

This is where the first rice was grown. Now parched. The new boring is land at the corner of this plot. Look
at the casurina trees at the fence. They look tired. Even now they need to be irrigated

I asked Subbu to test pumping with this small kerosene pump. It did not work well.

Some guests at the farm. They had come to attend the Sastha temple nearby

Sastha temple and pilgrims. I had asked Subbu to provide all help. this was last week.

A vew of the windpump.

Paramu testing the handpump. This is going to be a historic site with the
new Verticle windpump being fabricated by our own ideas.

Subbu wants to show me the new arrival.

Neem tree that my wife wanted to grow as much as possible. Was waiting for right moment.

Verticle Windpump - New Idea - Improving effeciency

One of the problems of verticle windmill is that the arms wind turbine have to travel against the air current half the time. This will reduce the efficiency.  To counter this, I have decided to make an arrangement as in this diagram.  This is my invention and anyone can copy and use it (No patent).

An additional arrow like structure should be installed from the middle pipe extending sidewards (At Half the distance of the full length of the properller arm).   This arrow will have a tail and a head which is nothing but V shaped plates which will "Block" the wind.  If it works, then this arrow head will block the wind falling on the returning propeller. 

Since this arrangement is pivoted on a ball bearing, this will rotate and always point against the wind at any time serving the purpose.  Thus blocking wind on the return journey and allowing wind to flow only towards the working properller, the windpump will gain maximum efficiency.  Concept yet to be tested.

The arrow head will block wind falling on the returning wind turnine blades.

Front view. I suggest the plates have to be further reinforced using structure.

Rear view.

My experiments on Vertical Windmill

My post on Facebook has invited a lot, but not huge response.  203 likes, 144 shares and around 25 comments. It has generated interest among few enthusiasts.  I had made a small "Do it yourself" pictorial guide in 10 slides in vernacular Tamil.  Why Tamil?, because this design I want to dedicate to small and marginal farmers who have small land holdings under 2 acres.  They are the people who are bullied a lot by so called corporate progressive farmers and policy makers.  If I post in English, except for the poor people this will get transmitted to all patent community, intellectuals and armchair philosophers who will endlessly argue on the (lack of ) efficiency of the vertical windpump concepts.

I hope like a bicycle, one day this design should freely be made available so that marginal & poor farmers can meet their small power needs in captivity. This will not generate electricity, but pump water using brutal force of wind in efficient manner.  When there is no wind, they can operate manually.

Back home Subbu and Paramu had discussed over the printouts. I am not sure how much they understood. I am scared they will do something without telling and get into trouble. This was always the case earlier. So I told Subbu to tell me before hand so that mutual value additions can be done.

 Today Subbu is busy with a local temple festival and Paramu,  the carpenter is free. I told Subbu to first install the Hand Pump which we have over the new Bore Hole. This hand pump was dismantled 3 years back when we purchased the ABS windpump.  It can be put to use now. I guess some spares have to be purchased.  The newly dug borewell has to be dressed as well.  That will keep them busy for next 10 days.  Meanwhile I can shape up the design of future Verticle axis windpump further before hitting the hammer.

I have also found a new idea of how to improve the efficiency of the pump further. I guess I need to make a scale model myself at home to prove all the points on a video. I had a major fundamental doubt on the working concept of the three V shaped wings model that I had designed.

Quickly i made a small model out of Paper, Pencil, sketch pen (for outer) and some wire.  Tested the working by blowing air from vaccum cleaner and hair drier to act as wind tunnel. I was utterly confused after the experiment. Blow this way, the windmill rotates anticlockwise way. Slight alteration and it starts rotating clockwise.   Sometime it stalls not rotating at all.  After many experiments I found these blowers are not good to generate natural flow of air.

So mounted the setup on the car and drove a few kilometers.  Was very much satisfied with results. Whew ! it works.  Here is the video link.

https://youtu.be/VOHCzlk94mE

Verticle Wind Pump Design Change

I felt that verticle wind pump should be more simple to make and with available resources locally.  I feel it will be very difficult to mount the rotating main axis. The pole is supposed to rotate from ground upto a height of 20 feet.  That is going to put a lot of weight on the pivotal bottom.

Therefore I changed the design.  In the new design the windmill flaps will be supported by a large PVC outer pipe. This pipe alone will rotate. This will be coupled to a fixed flag pole through ball bearing.  Thus rotational part is limited only to propeller.

Note the PVC pipe from propeller placed over the fixed mast (yellow). The power will be
transferred using V Belt and flywheel. Later I want to replace this with
bicycle free wheel and chain.

Further the energy should be transmitted to the gear assembly through bicycle free wheel and chain.

I communicated this to Subbu.  In fact Subbu and Paramu are so enthusiastic they have already ventured to Valliyoor to inspect the old gears at a workshop.  That is good.

Today Subbu should take printouts of what I sent from the Valliyoor browsing centre.  He had already visited Valliyoor 2 times. I told him to go slow. But he would'nt listen.

This is how the finished one should look. Except for PVC modification

The handpump assembly. There will be a counter weight at the handle
this is to balance the weight of boring rods (not shown) deep in the well.
This way you can go upto 500 feet more even more.
With counter weights, the operation must be smooth and stress free.

Meanwhile my post to facebook is drafted and kept ready. I must try my hands on sketchup software to draw a cycle chain with links today.  That will complete my art work. I may post this tomorrow.

I am sure marginal and small farmers will benefit from this design. My guess is it should not take more than 30,000/- for this.

Designing Vertical Wind Pump

We have failed in getting the small korean kerosene pump up and running.  It is unable to pull water. Pumps of similar capacity is used only in households to pump sump water to overhead tank.  For agriculture use it appears we need 3HP minimum. A kirloskar engine costs anywhere around 40,000.  Add a decent compressor 20000 and then mounting,  coupling and pipes. It will go above 80K.

Now vexed with searching for cheaper energy sources, decided to do something on my own.  I spoke to Subbu and told "we must do something".  No point in waiting for electricity board officials to move their ass.  Even if they at a later date, it is going to cost me lot of money.

Better design something which will pump water from borewell using wind once again.  Sitting at my desk on the week end I designed a verticle wind pump.   Explained this over phone to Subbu and Paramu and took assurance from Paramu he will not quit in between.  They were interested.  I am going to invest around 20K on this. It may result in a solution or may go waste.

Atleast let me try.

An elegant view from bottom. Also showing how the gears must be.

Here are my first cut diagrams. Inspired from Cup anemometer.  I am going to develop this further properly in the days to come. I will post this also in Facebook for my agriculture friends to copy and develop that in their neighborhood. backyard.  The design may look crude and not aero-dynamic. How does it matter ?  Butterflies are awkward in their flight design. But they migrate across continents !

I just want to create a competition among small farmers to get a better working solution.   In this area, I have seen enough of people claiming to have developed some windpump or other, but none of them have come to market so far.  Before a design matures, someone wants to hide it and never get it to masses.

Therefore it is better to leave it to community to develop the idea.  whoever can invest some money, sincerity,  faith and hard work - let him have it.  I am going to develop a miniature in ,my house. Meanwhile Subbu should start work near the farm. That will take time.

I just drew the below diagrams myself using sketchup. Amazing software. Just learned it couple of hours through youtube and went on creating shapes. It took around 10 hours. This is not drawn to scale. Neither I am an engineer.

These diagrams are not alone enough for my team to start the work. From my past experience I have learned that detailing is very important. Given a choice or freedom to think, they will end up creating something that will be very different.  I need to detail out upto mounting on the ground. This however is now enough to create enthusiasm and broad understanding.

A view from Top

Another view from top. Look at the blades. Initially I wanted this to be collapsable. but it is
difficult to intoduce complication at this stage. Let it get develop

The rotation should be converted to up and down motion. This will operate the manual
water pump below (not shown here).