In January the Thermofluidics team travelled to Kisumu in Kenya to set up two uDAHR test sites on working farms with their partner FuturePump. The uDAHRs were installed in hand dug wells with depths to water of 13m and 18m and powered by the FuturePump SF2 with PV panels.
A batch of the latest version of the uDAHR has been made ready for Phase 2 Field Trials with farmers in Bangladesh and Kenya. The uDAHR enables suitably matched surface pumps to lift from depth and therefore avoids the need to install more expensive and less robust submersible pumps.
Thermofluidics is creating a new position for a graduate engineer or physicist with 3 or more further years of experience in academia or industry to support our DAHR development work. Please see our jobs page for further information.
Thermofluidics has completed phase 1 controlled-conditions field trials of the latest smallholder irrigation DAHR and NIFTE technologies in collaboration with our development partners in the US, India and Bangladesh.
Thermofluidics has demonstrated a DAHR with 25m long pipes lifting water against a 60m head (surface pressure). Models indicate that a full 60m long apparatus situated in a deep well with an appropriately-sized drive pump will achieve market leading hydraulic efficiencies across a wide range of delivery flows.
Thermofluidics has begun controlled-conditions trials of the DAHR lifting water from depths of between 10m and 30m at sites in Pune and Kolhapur, India and Dhaka, Bangladesh
Thermofluidics engineers have begun working with iDE to assemble and commission a NIFTE solar-thermal pump for smallholder irrigation at iDE’s technical centre in Dhaka, Bangladesh. Cai Williams spent two weeks with the iDE team and successfully handed over the equipment to begin controlled trials.
Thermofluidics welcomes Lynne Dunnett as Experimental Technician. She will take on the running of our Oxford-based DAHR/NIFTE test facility. Lynne has ten years’ experience as a water engineer and has worked in East Africa and Asia on a range of irrigation projects, most of which were aimed at improving smallholder farmers’ livelihoods. Lynne has a background in Civil and Irrigation Engineering.
Thermofluidics has doubled its floor area at Begbroke Science Park, Oxford to include a new lab test facility in the Centre for Innovation and Enterprise that is specifically equipped to conduct parametric tests and incremental modifications to our DAHR and NIFTE technologies.
Thermofluidics has shipped two NIFTE Version 1.3. prototypes to iDE facilities in Denver, Colorado, U.S.A. and Dhaka, Bangladesh.