Hi,

At a cocktail party the other evening I had the opportunity to talk to a very interesting guy. He is a specialist in making things out of stainless steel - for example those tall chimney pipes at Sasol.

He is also retired but used as a consultant to the forthcoming Nuclear Power plants in South Africa.

We got around to talking about filtration and bingo - he has made a prototype of filter for an inverter. Yes in stainless steel. I could not get too many details from him as this invention is under patent registration here and overseas.

It has been invented to filter water farmers use on their spraying systems. Apparently they have enormous problems with solids coming through the pipes and blocking up the spray nozzles.

The water filter is a solids filter (mechanical filter). It is made of stainless steel and is fully automated and can run continuously. The sizes range from 1 meter across to 3 meters across.

The filter is divided into 4 chambers. There are layers within each chamber with supporting grids. Each chamber can be isolated whilst the other three are running. Each chamber has sensors. As the solids build up so does the pressure. This triggers the valves to close on one chamber, reverse the flow to back wash to waster and push compressed air into that chamber to air bump the media loose.

The system can run continuously in this way.

Unfortunately I could not more detail out of him as the patents were pending for the invertor.

I rather like the air-bumping part as I use this on my filters and it really works well.

Sounds like a koi pond filter to me!

Regards,
Chris

My wifes uncle has a simular type of thing on his farm. He pumps water out of his mud dam / resarvour with a 300mm pipe and a 40 kw pump.

There are 4 filters connected to this - catching frogs and all other kind of solids. As each filter gets cloged it also automatically cleans itself by ejecting the solids...not exactly sure how it works but it sounds simular.

Hi Wayne,
Can you get the brand name of that filter so I can look it up and make some enquiries please? Also can you ask how reliable the filter is and if they have had any problems. Sounds like the type of thing we need on koi ponds.
Regards,
Chris

Hi Chris

I phoned my wifes uncle today. He has no idea what the brand is - he uses the system on his vineyard irregation system and bought it from Berg rivier irregation in Paarl. In the last couple of years he has had no problems what so ever and there's no maintenance required what so ever.

What i can make out these filters are not that big only 30cm x 1m. He explained to me that it works on pressure - if the back pressure gets to much that chamber isolates itself and cleans itself. He has 4 of them in a row. He also mentioned to me that as far as he knows these systems only work with extremly high pressures and pumps in the range of 27kw - 40kw.

Hope this helps a bit.