Water Lifted By Compressed Air
For Municipal, Manufacturing, Irrigation or Other Water Supply

OTHER APPLICATIONS OF THE AIR LIFT. In addition to its value for raising water, compressed air lends itself with especial facility to the difficulties involved in handling brine from salt wells, for raising acids, acid solutions, and other liquids of high specific gravity and corrosive character. In manufac- turing establishments it is indispensable for ore leaching, handling dye, paper pulp and fluids. In sugar refineries, or any place where gritty particles and chemical solutions are encountered, and for many other purposes which will suggest themselves, the Air Lift has no equal. Ihere are no working or moving parts of any sort in contact with the liquid, and in consequence the few pipes and tanks necessary for storage and moving the liquid can be made of materials unaffected by the fluid. Even wooden pipes are sometimes used. SaJt Wells. Brine of a profitable saturation is secured and the output greatly increased. e have equipped many such plants which have not cost a penny since installed, and now operate with perfect satisfaction. We have a special method of piping salt wells developed by a wide experience, which increases the life of the system and avoids difficulties common to this class of well. One Example. An example of unusual interest is the salt wells of Messi’s. Buckley & Douglass Lumber Company. These wells are 2017 feet deep, the last 30 feet of which is solid rock salt. They are cased 8 inches down to 616 feet, the balance being a 7-incli uncased hole. A 44-incli pipe extends entirely to the bottom of the wells, which provides an annular space around its outside between it and the walls of the wells. Inside of this pipe is a 3-inch liquid discharge pipe extending down 985 feet. At the bottom the outer pipe has a reducer fitted to it, so that if the 3-inch pipe should rust through and drop it would be caught and could be pulled up by the outer pipe. The fresh water is run down outside of the 4|-inch pipe and kept up to within about 100 feet from the top of the well. It dissolves the rock salt at the bottom, and is lifted up through the central 3-inch pipe, the air being forced down the annular space between the outside of the 3-inch and inside of the 4|-inch pipes. This is practically the arrangement of pipes employed in the Saunders Air Lift system, described on page 34. 46