water ejector for vacuum

[Gary R]

Has anyone ever tried a water ejector for vacuum? Some of the machine I work on use these to pull vacuum on chambers. They use the venturi principle. They are about a 6" long plumbing fitting that you pass water through and get a vacuum from a port on the side.

The ones we use are 3/4" NPT. If you apply 60psi of water to it you will get about 2cfm at atmospheric. The rate of evacuation (cfm) loss is pretty linear all they way down to absolute vacuum. These will pull very deep and other sizes are available. To run this you would need a water pump and resivior to recirculate the water. I have the manufactures technical info on PDF. If anyone would like it and one of these ejectors I can send it. I have one in my scrap pile and will be getting another from a machine I will take out of service soon.

These should work for a few hundred taps?

[Sugarmaker]

Gary,
Would be interesting to see if this venturi system could work for sap. Keep us informed. Hey I thought you were not going to get and bigger? :) How does that new pan look?

Chris

[jrthe3]

gary i would be interested in the info and i like to see the ejector to see if i could get it to work

[Gary R]

Chris,

Good to here from you. You never know what could happen:). I've got to keep the creative juices flowing! Still haven't got my new pan back. The Hurricane shut power down for 4 days at my wifes shop so they've been busy.

In therory, this could provide high vacuum with out the need of a releaser. You could use the sap as the media to pump through the ejector. Would need to worry about ice and old sap left in the recirculation loop.

For a simple test to see if this would work on someones small tubing setup, just hook a garden hose up to it and see if a vacuum is pulled on the lines.

jrthe3, send me an email and I will forward the technical info. This would probable only work for up to a couple hundred taps. If your still interested in the part I'll either mail it or if Chris doesn't mind, drop it off at his place on one of my trips to Erie county.

P.S. Too all going on the PA state maple tour this weekend, Have fun!

[jrthe3]

Gary i sent you my address thank you