Automatic Bell Siphon Explained
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- čas přidán 19. 02. 2017
- This is a demo of a bell siphon I built in collaboration with a couple of engineering professors. There are certain cases where it would be nice to be able to create a siphon without any intervention, a self-priming or automatic siphon: the next level of siphonry. It's built out of an acrylic sheet and a piece of clear pipe. Thanks to Rolf Hut and Pete Marchetto for inviting me to collaborate on their project.
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Rolf Hut: rolfhut.nl/english
Pete Marchetto: about.me/pete.marchetto
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A lot of people have been commenting about the fluid tension theory of siphons. A siphon can indeed function without ambient air pressure in specific circumstances, but the bell siphon is relying on air pressure. More info in paragraph 5, here: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Siphon#Theory
According to me how siphon works: Once primed the weight of water going down in the pipe creates a suction in the pipe and pulls the liquid in the container above.
You can sense that suction if you put your thumb on the pipe opening at the suction point.
Mukesh right but since your thumb is not a the liquidn it can not get sucked in
MikTecRep how much pressure does the suction produce, and how high can it lift from the fulcrum?
Which way does the Soxhlet extractor work?
Practical Engineering thank you so much
Me: The pythagorean chalice is a cup that spills everywhere if you pour too much liquid in it.
Smartass Friend: All cups do that
This is why you give them the cup instead of telling them about the cup.
all cups spill the additional liquid beyond the capacity of the cup but pythogorean cup spills out the complete liquid
as always, great video. love the models & the graphics.
Thanks Old Tony!
Props to both of you, your channels are awesome!
Tony we look forward for new videos...I have a 250A inverter welder, Can you explain how to tig weld with an ordinary inverter welder with air cooled torch? Can you do that for me? I realy love your videos and watched them all several times. See ya.
The Man himself, in the flesh!
there was a local news story here a long while ago about a group of teens siphoning gas from vehicles. They eventually hit an RV park and mouth siphoned a tank just not the fuel tank it was the septic holding tank.
🤮
OOOOOH i bet they learned their lesson!
(probably the wrong one though...)
That's a poopspiracy
Nice to give Clive a shout out
I agree. BigClive is one of my favorite subscriptions.
Speaking of which, I've just subscribed to this channel too now!
BigClive sent me here.
Anyone who includes a clip of Clive must be worth watching.
Big Clive is a legend and is always welcome in Norfolk...
Working on my degree in hydroponic/aquaponics. Most ebb and flow systems have some type of bell syphon used. Up until now, I had never known how it works. Thank you sir for keeping me one step ahead👍
Very nice and clear explanation of the ancient device called the Pythagoras cup, also known as the greedy cup.
yes it is, a.k.a. greedy cup
Because if you fill your cup properly you are apparently greedy.
There are some great examples on Thingaverse if you want to print a Pythagoras cup too.
Made some in PET-G for friends.
+Electra Flarefire Did you remember to cover the surfaces with food grade epoxy? If you didn't, small pockets of bactetia will form at the layer transitions. Obviously alcohol will kill off most of them but bare 3D prints are not to be considered food safe for this reason. There are probably other ways to make them safe for food but it's the only way I've heard of to pass actual food safety requirements. If nobody is trying to drink from them then that's fine too, however curiosity is very difficult to deal with sometimes.
That said I love printing with PET-G, it's like it was made for printing.
The cup was printed in PET-G, I normally print in ABS and acetone wash for smoothness(Do a lot of molding, made a number of silicon cups, the pythag cup was too complicated for this) but not in this case as I liked the translucent look. We flush it through with hot soapy water, rince then dry well. Plus it's only ever used with wine and water.
Food grade regs are interesting. There are different ratings for contact(Biscuit cutters, even good 'ol budget brand ABS passes this one easily), holding(Glasses/plates) and storage(Containers). For example pewter(containg lead) is safe for the first two but never for storage.)
If your layer adhesion is very good, they are typically about as safe as wood(Also porous) or things like a plastic chopping board that has been used biologically speaking so hot soapy water and let them dry completely before putting away normally works well. Spray down with dilute bleach if you want to be make sure.
But to my knowledge very, very few 3d printers are certified for food grade for everything, even though you can get the filament.
Just wanted to say how great your channel is and how much we love it. You explain things really well and in great detail. It's fantastic to have things explained properly and not dumbed down. This is how we can spread the love of engineering and the beauty of a well engineered and simple and elegant solution
really cool, love that you liked clive also! :)
“Automatic siphon” sounds like what they would call an electric water pump in the 1800s.
I've watched multiple videos on Bell Siphons and every time I learn something new. LOVE the video!!!!
Another great self-explanatory and useful video by Grady. Also use flexible tubing immersed completely under the surface, block off the outflow end and release the blocked end into the lower container.
i have never seen a bell siphon before never even heard of one, love the simplisity of it and how it works so well, your model is a real nice way to show it working, this vid was sooo cool for me, thank you verry much =].
Ashley Smith if you love this you'll love the Ram Pump.
Loads of videos on CZcams.
Enjoy.
i will go check that out my friend, i really enjoiy looking at stuff and how it works, and even reverse engineering it for a better understanding, thank you muchly =], knolage is priceless.
That is so freaking cool! I love learning about hydrodynamics. Thank you!
this is a concept that I have tried to explain many times to my less engineering interested friends, who are interested in hydroponics, in the past with no success. but this demonstration is simple and beautiful and with its help i am sure they will get it
I've used this in my garden, 3 watt solar pump to fill the feed tank from the collection res (takes all day) and the bell siphon to flood the beds (~15 min). Beds drain to res and everything starts again when the sun comes back up. Works great as long as it stays clean. Great vid as always!
Have you considered making a clock that uses a series of siphons and chambers to represent time with water?
Cool idea!
Practical Engineering I've wanted to make one for a while but haven't had the time to work out the volume of all the chambers and it requires a bit of precision getting the siphon timings right.
well in Europa Center in Berlin, there is a working water clock that spans from 1st floor to ground floor.
and it seems really complicated
Haha you haven't got the time, thus you don't have a clock so again you "haven't got the time." :-p
Great video Grady. I have known about the Pythagoras cup but I really enjoyed hearing about the practical applications of the concept. Thanks for sharing!
Logic Bob it's a Grady cup
***** That's what I said.
;-)
One practical use of this siphon are bongs. In this case it's called a percolator. It's probably the most fun practical application of it^^
This is one of my favorite videos of yours. Keep up the great work.
Amazing video as always. It actually helped me out a lot because I have to drain the gasoline out of my lawn mower every year so that it doesn't freeze. But they way I'd do it was just to let it run and use up the gas. Now I can just use the syphon technique. Thank you so much!
¡Hey! I love your videos. Thanks for the inspiration. I'm watching you from Mexico. Next year I'll be entering the UNAM. Your videos make engineering so awesome.
"The next level of siphonry"
I'm happy that I'm not the only one who rather enjoyed that line.
Almost in every house there is flush tank
when youtube was in its infancy i learned how to build a complete aquaponic system, and still have a box in the garage with the old pvc bell siphons. blast from the past!
Cheers Brady all your vids are really good and easy to follow.
You should make a video explaining what happened at the Oroville dam and what they're doing to remediate the situation
bell spihon are used to release softener on washing machines
Olivier Nicole that's what I was watching for, to learn more about my washing machine. I have cleaned many machines but never understood the process by which it worked.
Ahh... so THAT's how it works! I've always wondered how the liquid was able to get out of the little tray!
Softener makes the dispencer drawer go mouldy
Olivier , i on't really doubt what you are saying here, but why are they using this method, surely simple over flow when water is added from above wold do the job anyway?
Simon Green Without the siphon the softener tray would not empty at all. It would just stay full of water (with some residual softener). With the siphon only a small amount of residual water remains.
I adore your models! In physics classes we learn a lot of mathematical models to describe reality but your physical models take intuition to a whole another level. Please do more, like the ground water flow model, these help illustrate the principles we'd like to teach in experimental physics but are extremely abstract to a novice or extremely difficult to visualise.
SUGGESTION FOR FUTURE VIDEOS: I love this video because it has a nice, uncut 15 second section just showing the siphon doing its thing. It feels like being in a lab and just watching a demo! Many of the newer videos will show off The Device at the beginning but never give us just a straight section where we can watch how it works and observe.
Please keep the little demo sections in the middle of the videos!
In many cases the siphon's purpose is an intermittent surging flow, as this saves water for cleaning/flushing purposes. But, if the input flow is too small, water can just dribble over the lip of the drain tube and it can't form a water seal. If the input flow is about the same as the outlet capacity, the siphon can enter an undesired steady state where it never stops flowing. More complex siphons use additional air communication tubes, air chambers, and U-traps, to assure the flow is reliably intermittent without entering a steady state.
Yes, and along with tube size scaling and flow rate, the whole system is also dependent on the surface tension, viscosity and density of the fluid. Thus making auto-siphons very finicky. Many people get caught scaling up models that don't adequately entrain the air in the top of the siphon, or the water in the bottom of the inverted siphon in the case of a geyser airlift pump.
What if you want a steady state?
If you want a steady state, there's no reason to use an auto siphon to begin with.
passive technology fascinates me.
Right - it's intelligent design versus constant energy consumption and its concomitant costs (financial, environmental, materials, etc.).
thank you for explaining the science behind bell syphon as i am making a DIY aquaphonic system for myself, it was of great help as you showed the system with a transparent device
thank you so much for the demo and diagrams! i tried watching several videos previously and didn’t understand why the bell siphon worked for aquaponic systems … now i get it. thanks again!
+1000 points for repping big clive
I remember being astonished by the Pythagoras cup as a kid, though they called it the greedy cup at the time.
That was the best bells syphon tutorial I've found yet, good job and thank you.
One of the best explanations of a bell siphon that I have ever seen!
Hey, that's Pythagoras cup. I feel so smart when I get it
I watched a 3 and a half minute unskippable ad even though I have ad block. Does that qualify me as a patron?
Griffin you were bring punished for having adblock installed
3 and a half minutes,UNSKIPPABLE? CZcams is a human rights violator! hahaha (Not as bad as twitter targeting certain users, but still bad)
Griffin
Those seem to come up at times... Go back and open the video again and you should get a different ad, which is usually either shorter or skippable, or both.
As a fellow CZcams content creator, I'll say do what you want, but we do care about the 0.001, which ads up with lots of views, and it helps to pay for our livelihood. It is very much appreciated if you watch the ads, and we might create less content if we get paid less for doing it....
probably just get a better ad blocker - ublock origin works fine.
Hi! My name is Fernando and I'm from Brazil. I'm a Mechanical Technician here and I like your videos and explanations.
Your content is great sir. Highly effective for the upcoming civil engineer who lack technical knowledge due to poor financial conditions. You are doing a great job....👏👏👏
Check out the chemical apparatus known as a Soxhlet extractor.
Ooh, you should do a video on ram pumps.
I’m glad channels like this exist on CZcams. You actually learn something
Thank you for sharing it! I learned a lot from your channel. Greetings from Bulgaria, Europe
According to me how siphon works: Once primed the weight of water going down in the pipe creates a suction in the pipe and pulls the liquid in the container above.
That is how it works. In a regular siphon, atmospheric pressure is irrelevant for such a short drop. It only comes into play for the auto siphon. The way he explained a regular siphon here was inaccurate because atmospheric pressure is also pushing the water back up from the bottom end, which cancels out the atmospheric pressure at the top. Fluid pressure differential from gravity is the only measurable factor neglecting pipe friction.
Isn't this essentially how a toilet works? When you flush, the upper bowl empties into the lower bowl raising the water level so the siphon can start which pulls the rest of the contents out? Please correct me if I'm wrong. ;) Also great video as always Grady! I'm always excited to see your videos in my feed. :D
Yes, I believe a toilet is another kind of self-priming siphon called a "U" siphon.
But first you must empty the lower bowel
Old toilets used 8 gal / 30 L to fill the bowl, overtop the outlet pipe and start the siphon. Modern toilets use less water, by using a jet hole aiming into the output pipe, ramming water up the siphon over the bend to start it, using the height of the tank to pressurize the jet.
Eden's Aquaponics Depends on the toilet design. Most American domestic toilets are siphons; most European ones are not..
You made me like engenering. Interesting unique stuff. Keep it coming please. Thanks.
Very nice explanation, many thanks to you :)
Interesting, thanks. Can't think of a practical use for myself/homeowner, however.
It's used in toilets for example. At least some and in some parts of the world. That way once you flush water reaches only certain level (for example needed to clean the inside of the toilet) and then quickly is siphoned out of the drain. I know a lot of Eastern bloc countries had toilets like this. I think you will also see them in Netherlands etc. It is rare in English speaking world.
Also flushing itself can use this, you just put a cap on the siphon - and when you press to flush it pulls the cap up allowing for water flow. Sometimes there are holes drilled that when 1 part of the "button" is pressed, you only drain half a tank.
Practical Engineering.... Rube Goldberg machine.... I feel like there's a joke in there somewhere.
If he made it into a cube, it could be called a Practical Rube X Cube
this is an informative video. thank you so much.
This is SOO COOL. It gave me a great idea of how to regulate the water level of my parents pool and water fountain. Can't wait to try to apply what I have learned here.
But siphons work even in a vacuum. This has been tested with ionic fluids to prevent boiling due to the low pressures. Meaning pressure is only partly the reason for siphoning but it's mostly cohesion.
Yes, yes and yes.
Is there a video explaining the whole board?
It really is as simple as the diagram shows. Just imagine the black lines are 1" wide strips of clear acrylic.
I think he means the complete goldberg installation
Oh! Sorry I misunderstood. Yes! Rolf pasted the link below and I have added it to the video description.
Thanks, Grady. Dankjewel, Rolf. :-)
Wow! I had never seen a bell siphon before, that is quite cool!!
Really awesome simplified video! Thank you.
Off topic, but what is being used to glue the acrylic sheets together for the container & bell.
I'd like to know that as well.
We used chloroform (carefuly) to join perspex in school.
x x in case your still interested.... If you leave a scrap of clear polycarbonate in acetone with a lid on the jar to stop the acétone evaporating you end up with a goo that can be used for this. Not all plastics dissolve in acétone.
but... will this work the same if the drain tube goes in a loop over an edge, to work as a normal siphon?? the drain pipe never goes above the "drain chamber" in the examples you show, so it makes me wounder..
No, sorry if that wasn't clear. This type of siphon can't prime itself to discharge water at a higher level than the peak water level in the reservoir.
that's what i suspected :)
NorseMarauder Might it work if the volume in the reservoir is sufficient to fill the outlet hose over the crest, thus forming a 'regular' siphon?
i finally completely understand how siphon really work. thanks so much for the video.
Well written and spoken, nicely said with the incorporation of history, science and engineering
Wow! This is practically a capacitor for liquids.
ShiroAndRin
Great point. I always used to think of a hydraulic accumulator as a “liquid capacitor”.
Both build up pressure (hydrostatic, or hydraulic), but this has an inherent automatic method for discharge of the prime.
I have a bong with two levels of water in it and that's how it works.
GREAT WORK!!!!!!!!!!
Thank you so much! I could not understand how it works from the book explanation. Finally understanding it feels so empowering 😁👌
354k subs and 354k views
Coincidence?
I don't know
1 year later, 1.1M subs, and 1.1M views.
I LOVE your channel, I am using it to get refrenses for the sump I'm going to build for my fishtank
Exactly what I was looking for. Thanks!
Awesome video man. Its absolutely clear now. Thanks
Thank you for showing the mechanics of this siphon. Now I get it :)
Clear & Brief demonstration Thank you!
Amazingly explained....soo simple
Great explanation and demonstration. Thanks
Loved this! Now I can make me a timer! Thanks for sharing:D
Fantastic explanation
Wonderful channel I love this stuff keep making more :)
I love a Bell Siphon. To me it's one of those simple yet clever tools.
خیلی عالی واموزنده..ممنون از تفهیم زیبای که انجام دادید
thanks! im building a bell siphon for my aquaponics set up and this made it way easier to figure out when i go to home depot!
need more videos like this. great job.
that’s amazing man love it
I like the channel I find it informative and relaxing.
Thank you sir really your tutorials help us a lot specially engineers.
That was super cool thanks!
So awesome my man!
that would have great factory application. great video btw!
Grady is the man. You make everything interesting.
I am looking at purchasing a home with a bell siphon septic, my research brought me here. This was all I needed to understand the basic principles, thank you.
Corey, Good on you for doing research on your new system. I work with Dosing siphon systems quite a bit. If you have further questions gimme a post or a shout.
Larger systems may require additional engineering for septic. Large diameter pipe tends to act as a weir without starting a flushing cycle. For septic applications, look into piloted siphons. A small lower siphon is used to start a cycle. The upper bell of the small pilot siphon is plumbed to the larger siphon which has it's discharge submerged in a lower tank or barrel to prevent drawing in air. When the small siphon starts, it draws air from the bell of the large siphon and keeps drawing air as it's flow increases until it is able to flush out the remaining air into a full flush cycle. For even larger septic applications, the pilot is able to start several large siphons in parallel.
I love your channel...THANK YOU!
Thanks for the video. I finally understand the bell sipon which is used in aquaponics.
its very good ! simple and clear !
One of the best channels of CZcams
Love your videos man...
Keep it up! These are great!
I really love your videos.
Love your videos! I notice the cup you were using was from wurstfest, then realized your close to where I live in san antonio. Keep em coming buddy. Great entertainment and lots of learning!
Same! those cups and pitchers are dead useful
Thx for upload!
clear and concise description of something that is obvious but I hadn't seen before - even though I have heard urinals automatically flushing, I'd always assumed it was some form of hinged (tipping) tank in the reservoir. Thanks for the illumination.
Great explanation, thanks buddy.
Thanks for the easy explanation.
nice explanation, thank you.