As long as you can get it into deep enough water where when the unit is off the inlet part of the air introduction point is under about 2' of water it should be fine at the smaller diameter pipes. A cubic foot of freshwater at it's heaviest is at 62.4 LBS- 62 LBS depending on turbidity and temperature(Most calculations are based off the higher value), a cubic foot of seawater is 64 LBS. If you divide 64 by 144 you will come out with 0.44444 repeating indefinitely that is how much pressure one foot of seawater puts out in PSI per column foot. We use .445 PSI for all depth calculations or 33' = 14.7 = 1 atmosphere equivalent.

Freshwater is at it's heaviest 62.4/144= 0.43333 repeating indefinitely so at 6' wear your muck lies it should function fine till you start getting into really shallow depths then it will just be a fancy bubble maker. You are just creating slugs of air and water that have to be replaced as the bubbles cause the column of water to rise on top of it. With more slugs of air and water which the water will draw in from the bottom bringing with it the muck.

Hope this helps your math buddies if they want to run some quick calculations. But IMHO it should work out till you lose the water column above your inlet point. at which point you can cheat the system some and lay it down at a slight angle but always managing to have an uphill grade, as if you put it downgrade you once again just have a fancy bubble gun.

We are currently using one offshore on a project in 75 feet of seawater(FSW) to remove sand over a pipeline which is buried 9' deep for every foot we go down the pipe keeping an OSHA approved 3:1(3' in each direction for every 1' down) ratio we are removing about 9 cubic yards of material.

Anyways let me know if you decide to run with it and let me know if it work's if you do. Or hit me up if you have any more questions.

Have a good one sir.



For those who are curious what I sent him it was a shopping list and a link to an extremely basic airlift system I found on a site. As I didn't have time to make a mock up in excel.

http://www.mindspring.com/~divegeek/airlift.htm
(Really basic airlift design link)