Trombe Power

Charles Taylor, born in Chatham, NB, created a system that compressed air using the flow of river.

It had no moving parts, it consumed zero electricity.

One installation of this system provided local industry with 4 million watts of air compression capacity. It delivered 860 kilopascal air at a rate of 1.13 million liters per minute.

This system was utilizing only 8 meters of head, the difference in height of the water intake to the water outlet. Unlike a dam, the flowing water did not rotate any turbine blades. Instead, it used tubes to suck air into the flow of water. The water flowed fast enough that the air bubbles stayed in suspension for the entire trip down the 100 meter deep shaft.

As the bubbles made their trip down the shaft, the weight of the water squeezed the bubbles smaller and smaller. This squeezing increased the pressure of the air bubbles to the previously mentioned 860 kilopascals.

Once the bubbles hit the bottom of the shaft, they took a 90 degree turn to the horizontal. The water in flow hit splash plates on the entrance to the horizontal tunnel, which helped to start separating the air bubbles from the water.

The water was still flowing, but it was flowing slower, as the tunnel increased in cross-sectional area with every meter of distance. The bubbles popped to the surface in this increased volume of tunnel and gravity kept the water at the bottom and the compressed air at the top.

Eventually, along this horizontal tunnel, the cross section decreased again to a size where only the water could escape.

Acting as a siphon, the water took another 90 degree turn to the vertical and flowed up the shaft until it was released at an outlet that was 8 meters lower in elevation than the inlet.

The air bubbles, having separated from the water in the horizontal tunnel, formed a large volume of air that, due to the depth of the tunnel and the weight of the water above its height, was highly compressed. A pipe leading from this horizontal tunnel led the compressed air to many compressed air customers, primarily mining companies that used the compressed air to run drills, hammers, and various other pieces of pneumatically powered equipment.

The advantage of pneumatic equipment in mining is that it does not expel harmful gases. As well, the expelled air from pneumatic equipment will cool the air and provide fresh air to the miners.

On top of that, the reduced production of any kind of spark lowers the chance of igniting any fossil gases that might be present in the mine. No spark from electric motors, no sparks coming from a petroleum powered engine's exhaust.

Compressed air is safer in many ways, beneficial in so many others.

These days, compressed air is a huge industry. Many industrial machines consume compressed air for their operation. Compressed air is considered the 4th utility, after electricity, water, and natural gas.

• 10 percent of U.S. industrial electricity goes to power compressors.

• 5 percent of U.S. natural gas production is consumed by natural gas compression.

• Air and gas compression consumes at least $24 billion of energy costs in the U.S. and EU

• Energy costs account for roughly 75 percent of a typical compressors’ lifetime cost of ownership.

A Taylor Air Compressor system would be able to use the flow of a river to produce compressed air without the energy costs and 0% of the compressor's lifetime cost of ownership would be devoted to Energy costs.

There is a huge market for compressed air.

I propose that Permify Canada seek a parcel of land next to a river. The land would become an industrial park that hosts businesses that consume a great deal of compressed air.