Air-lift pump worksheet: flow, head and air-demand estimates
Free air-lift calculation worksheet: This article explains a separately hosted Excel example for estimating air-lift pump flow and air requirements. The free file link and its attribution are below. Review assumptions, units and original usage restrictions before applying the worksheet to equipment design.
There are two major sections to this spreadsheet. They fill two different niches. 1. on the left figures from a known, desired gal/day number. 2. On the right will calculate the maximum capacity for a given scenario. There are a lot of variables that might lower that maximum. This is a theoretical maximum. It will not be grossly in error. My test demonstrated a flow of 30 gal/min and the calculator said it would be 33 gal/min
I have entered my basic pumping needs in the calculators.
The bottom, yellow cells show the CFM and the pressure needed to overcome the head. An air pump would need to match this and not be at its maximum, and therefore, limit that would make it prone to failure.
The convention I follow is to enter data in green cells and the formulas are completed in other colored cells.
If you enter a set of data where the air lift assembly will not work, there will be odd characters appear within the calculations. If this occurs, change the sizes or gallons to tweak your desired assembly. For instance, if a 2″ pipe will not work, then try a 3″ and see if the formulas complete properly.
This spreadsheet is built off other persons’ work . It must not be distributed for profit. It is for education and design purposes only. I built the calculator on the right based on formulas found on an engineer ing site for air lift assemblies.
Please give proper attribution.
The calculator on the right is adapted from one found on http://www.airliftpump.com/ap_calc.htm by Dr. Sam Kondo, Ph.D. who is expressing the formulas from:
Download the original free air-lift Excel worksheet: Open the externally hosted .xls file. This is a third-party, noncommercial educational worksheet; it is not sold as part of the paid package. Verify the calculations and respect the author’s attribution and distribution conditions.
Optional next step for cement-plant calculations: If you also need kiln, raw-mix, grinding or bag-filter spreadsheets, review the separate $49 Excel Tools Pack and its complete 54-file inventory before buying. The air-lift worksheet above is free and is not listed among those 54 files.