The fact that it worked basically 24/7 with little to no intervention for 70 years is incredible.

No moving parts and almost no maintenance. How cool is that?? I love efficiency! Why don't we do more of this??

It's funny that it was re-invented, because not only was it used in Europe, but it also was part of many of the earliest steel production factories on the east coast. Many plants in New York and Pennsylvania had that trompe-based air compression tech for coke fired furnaces prior to changing to electrified steel production processes. So it was re-discovered for what amounted to a third time in the overall scheme of things.

missing something by 'a single decimal point' is a funny way of saying 'by a factor of 10' or 'an order of magnitude'

63 years old, and never heard of this concept or it's application and use. Bravo.

Thee was a similar devise installed at a gold mine in southern Ecuador built around 1920 or 30. I saw it operating in 1950 as a child. Also, a different use of water power saw a 2 chamber compressor driven by gravity forcing air to the top of a chamber with a head sufficient to put out air at 125 psi at Butte, Montana. Each side was slowly bled of the compressed air at a near constant pressure while the other side was filling with water. The water ended up not below the dewpoint having been pumped from hot underground mines, and this caused the pipes to condense water and freeze during the winter. It was decided that the power was best used by putting it to an electric generator spun by a Pelton wheel, and the Engineer claimed a better out put of energy, but with a great deal of expensive machinery..

Really cool! It's like the exact opposite of an air-lift water pump!

Thank you for not adding back round noise. My head produces its own.

It's fun to see a rather 'ancient' technology experience a modern day revival. Great video Gilles!

Great video. I first heard of this from Bill Mollison and thought it was such a good idea. Compressed air can even be used as air conditioning.

we need more towns with names like "cobalt", that's really good i'm tired of everything having super generic names like "townville"

Very interesting. This was used at a mine in the up of Michigan.

It is a very ancient system of air compression. In Italy there are still some examples of medieval iron refining workshops operating with this system. They were called "air horns". The first English blast furnaces of the first industrial revolution worked with this system. The energy efficiency ratio between an air horn and a compressor is 1 to 7, this is why it is preferred to make electricity instead of compressed air

Such a cool technology. Sure, you could use the same hydraulic potential to drive a hydro electric turbine and a series of electrical switch gear to get the power to electric air compressors and air dryers, but the trompe requires far less maintenance and has higher efficiency. Too bad they didn’t take that installation that shut down in the 1980s and use the air produced to drive electric generators, after the mines closed and the air itself was no longer needed. I saw a video of this plant in operation last year or so, taken the day before they closed the plant down, and had wanted to learn more about this amazing machine, so thank you for this great video!

This is even more impressive than those giant Persian natural air conditioned spaces.

It was converted into a small hyropower plant back in the 1980's. Don't know if it's still operating, though.

I was in Cobalt once on a NARCOA motorcar excursion on the Ontario Northland Railway ~24 years ago, but only learned about this intriguing apparatus just a couple days ago whilst researching something else. :)

HTF did he work out the calculation.. There must be a formula.. Genius 😂

Fascinating, ashamed I have never heard of this before!

That compressed air would be great energy storage and/or generation since it avoids the ecological disruption of ordinary hydroelectric dams

Amazing video. Thank you so much! I know lots about Hydraulics, Pneumatics, A/C and and H/D mechanical equipment but never knew anything about this concept or the actual utilisation. Thanks for an inspirational video and history lesson!!!!

Man, that was Fascinating ! ! Simply Fascinating ! Thanks so Much 😎👍

Taylor air compressor at the Victoria Copper Mine in Ontonagon, Michigan. 1906

Thank you for bringing this to a broader audience. I appreciate greatly the mechanical elegance of this method of compression.

What an elegantly beautiful technology !

Bravo........every dam should have one........clever idea........falling water......put coils around water pipe and generate power.......water air pump........cheers

Such cool technology

Amazingly simple, clever technology.

Absolutely bloody amazing ... thank you!! This whole channel looks fascinating, subscribed.

These videos are phenomenal, this channel is so well-poised to blow up! Looking forward to when it does.

Interesting! Thanks! :)

This is really cool - I never had an inkling of this air-compressing effect! Though I have traveled through Sudbury many times - I think of it as the nickel capitol of North America, though I can't say if that's accurate.

Such amazing old tech.......thanks for the great coverage of it.

what's old is new again, its just improved by new technology... great video!!

Why is this technology not more widely employed? I first encountered it in a lecture series by Bill Mollison (considered one of the fathers of ‘permaculture’) in which he casually mentions at the beginning of the series paraphrasing: “if you want free energy use a trompe, there, I’ve solved the world’s energy problems.”

As a kid, growing up in the area, i remember, clearly, my father driving us down the backroads beyond Cobalt to see the "blow off". Mainly on the weekends when the mines were idle.. Seeing the huge steel pipes running through the bush, near the road, hearing the hiss of escaping air at the pipe joints.... I just saw an article about the "tesla turbine"... Seems several of these could be coupled to generator sets to produce electricity... The original site of this still exists, maybe, it will be rehabilitated some day...

good to know. thanks for sharing

Very cool. Neat video. Thanks.

Great channel. Good vibe too. 🎉

Thank you for sharing this.

Great presentation, thanks.

first video ive seen by you. subscribed, great stuff!

👍👌👏 Oh WOW, simply fantastic. Until now I have never heard of this simple, ingenious and extremely effective system. Thanks a lot for making teaching explaining recording editing uploading and sharing. Best regards, luck and health in particular.

That's pretty amazing!

Excellent - thanks This design, wih its very critical ratios, screams to be re investigated using Viktor Schauberger's implosion vortex double helix on the inlet flow !

I love tromps. Really good video on it. The best one icould find on ragged chutes.

Inject air at the bottom of a well and it'll bring up water with it. Kind of the reverse here.

Very interesting!

That is quite clever by half!

This channel is endlessly interesting.

Great video...👍

With the cost of operating compressors what it is, one would think that hydraulic air compression would be set up wherever practical.

amazing that this such simple tech is still being used I hope it only gets more wide spread one day!

Thank you ye mighty algorithm for showing me this gem. One sub more, great video!

wow what a contraption! No motor no nothing!

Good ol TVA

incredible

OMG … I am 2 seconds in and started watching because I love to travel down Coleman Township road and follow the giant air line. I’ve never really known how the air plant actually worked. Looking forward to this. :) ❤ from Moose Factory (I went to HS in New Liskeard, my aunt lives in Haileybury.) :)

This is bad ass

a single decimal point is a whole order of magnitude, it is not a testament. however thank you very much for all this, news to me, and valuable information.

Fascinating! Solar and batteries seem silly after this piece!

82% efficient? There are new developments in high density compressed air storage, particularly to power cars. Perhaps compressed air plants like this can provide cheap power for these.

The dam at 1:37 is on the Montreal river in Wisconsin, just north of Saxon.

The masculine urge to drill holes into funny looking ice and drop water down mine shafts just to see what happens...

It's not a new idea. Interestingly, an earlier system was developed for a mine in the UK - Rampgill Mine at Nenthead, Cumbria. If you search for 'Brewery Shaft, Nenthead' you'll find all of the information. At Nenthead they didn't just create compressed air - they also generated electricity using Pelton Wheels.

Thank you for this it’s mine blowing no moving parts free energy

Genius.

Makes me think about the design of the Great Pyramids?!

Amazing info thank you. This technology should be used to generate electricity as well. I want to try it small scale.

Canadians know all there is to know about compressed air. Ask Terrance & Phillip.

Very nicely made video about trompes, thanks !! I wonder if some generators could'nt be made for cities uses, with chutes.... or with piped house waters, rain gutters/dirty water chutes from buildings .. ; ) Clean, storable, low tech !! , I soo try a small scale in my bathroom and rain gutter !

I would like to know more about the HAC designed by the Tennessee Valley Authority. I haven't found anything about it on the internet yet. Hope someone can provide a link to the details.

a "single" decimal point error is an error of 10 times the size.

"[A] crazy, two-bit-so-called engineer, self taught, little better than a mechanic with a bunch of wacky ideas." love it

So does anyone know what the design error was that caused the efficiency drop in the last example?

hot air goes up, so dig hole and free energy

What is a kilopascal?? Internet converter says 50 psi and 125 psi respectively for the two figures given. Both sound like fairly standard and typical compressed air pressures.

Could you build it on the ocean and use it to drive a desalination plant?

Where are these drawings and old printed photos from?

Great video! ..though being off by a factor of 10 isn't exactly "a testament to exacting calculations" but more of a "measure twice, cut once" warning and pointing out the danger of hubris.

30,000,000 ounces of silver?geepers!where does it all go?

I'm wondering what dimension was so critical that it dropped the efficiency of the modern plant so low. It all seems so simple.

I saw a bubbler that used air in a small wet tube to raise water for irrigation. So guess this is kind of the opposite of that

WOW

Wahnsinn, was Menschen mit Verstand und guter Bildung erfunden haben.

Pretty hilarious that a "crazy, two-bit-so-called engineer, self taught, little better than a mechanic with a bunch of wacky ideas" can build a successful, low cost compressed air plant that ran like a top for 70 years, but when government engineers attempted to copy his design, they failed miserably.

Why isn't this used more?

Also called a tont

Geeeze...thanks...You made me look up a kilopascal. 7 kp = 1 psi

Smart is as smart does.

can it turn electrical turbines ? is it more efficient than hydroelectric turbines ?

8:21 WHAT CAUSES THAT SORT OF DROP IN EFFICIENCY WITH A SINGLE Decimal POINT! I MUST KNOW PLEEESE HELP! (Great video)

Leave it to a Tennessee engineer to mess it all up, have you seen our highway system in our state?

I bet Mr. Taylor said he would provide 125 PSI air, not 862 Kilopascal air.

I heard that it was in use in 1560

The geyser could spin a generator.

>misread a decimal point and caused the efficiency to drop from 80 percent to 10 percent So the efficiency should be off by a factor of ten, because that's how decimal points work. Dang, they got two percent efficiency for free!

Use the compressed air to generate electricity, renewable,energy sorted….

TVA engineer doing government employee stuff.

Why isn't this method used to produce electrical power?