Geyser Pump

Certain air lift designs can go beyond the basic lift guidelines by using chambers and air burps to accelerate water faster than through a straight pipe and thus much higher than their submergence would normally allow.
There are several patents for geyser pumps that we can learn from, and Olomana Gardens in Hawaii has been kind enough to demonstrate an excellent design for a type of geyser pump too.
The basic principles behind their designs and changes over the standard air lift are to create a “burp” of air. This air slug carries water several feet.
The mechanism to allow this to happen involves a large bubble that goes through a narrower pipe than it was created from.
They also improved on the design by adding a check valve and a bubble chamber. The check valve holds the water reservoir in place while the bubble chamber builds up. Once pressure is enough to open the valve, it purges the bubble chamber creating a very large burp.
Olomana Gardens also improved the design further by adding a separator at the top of the burp to quickly channel water away and reduce resistance from the water falling back into the pipe.
The device is a bit noisy, so they added a silencer chamber that reduces sound.
Additional volume or gallons per hour are not added using this method, but water can be pumped reliably up to 20 feet using only a 25 watt pump and their “aquazen” design improvements over the normal air lift.
I will be adding pictures and tests of the aquazen that my son and I built and the comparison to a standard air lift to see which works best.
Note that the geyser pump should pump less water over all, but can lift it much higher.
You can review a few of the patented geyser pump designs at the links below:

• Geyser Pump Patent 8371826
• Aquazen