This article and the posts above illustrate Her Royal malignant intent towards Africa.

Hand pumps.

Nigeria can't afford drilling because of the cost of oil?

Colonialists have kept Africa primitive on purpose, and now rednecks think these people are stupid.

Where they can, small-scale extraction using hand pumps would be better than large-scale drilling projects, which could quickly deplete the reservoirs and have other unforeseen consequences.

‘Water levels deeper than 50 meters will not be able to be accessed easily by a hand pump,’ said the study, led by Dr Alan MacDonald of the British Geological Survey. ‘At depths greater than 100 meters the cost of borehole drilling increases significantly due to the requirement for more sophisticated drilling equipment.’

The amount of water a borehole yields is another key issue. A small community hand pump needs a borehole with a flow rate of 0.1 to 0.3 litres per second. For large-scale irrigation, the rate needs to be much higher, say around 50 litres.

DrPostman  Wrote:

Where they can, small-scale extraction using hand pumps would be better than large-scale drilling projects, which could quickly deplete the reservoirs and have other unforeseen consequences.

‘Water levels deeper than 50 meters will not be able to be accessed easily by a hand pump,’ said the study, led by Dr Alan MacDonald of the British Geological Survey. ‘At depths greater than 100 meters the cost of borehole drilling increases significantly due to the requirement for more sophisticated drilling equipment.’

The amount of water a borehole yields is another key issue. A small community hand pump needs a borehole with a flow rate of 0.1 to 0.3 litres per second. For large-scale irrigation, the rate needs to be much higher, say around 50 litres.

I pencil-whipped some of the small community requirments to figure out how much energy it would take some of these hand-pump folks. I changed l/sec to gal/min and meters to feet and came up with a minimum of 1.6 gal/min at a depth of 164 feet. Cranking in some other necessary increases requires 165 Watts coming off a photovoltaic array or about 1/5 horsepower: do-able by a person, but something that would take shifts of guys, pumping maybe an hour ar two at a time.

And even if you can get people working around the clock, there's still only about 2000 gallons per day. Here in Arizona, we estimate that you can grow your small-scale crops (using 'xericulture' or low-water-uage farming); and cook, drink, and wash up (forget about the lawn or washing your car) for about 90 gal/person/day.

So you're talking (realistically) of a single hand-pump being able to support maybe 20 people, most of whom would be taking turns pumping the water!

A photovoltaic (PV) arrangement would be a lot better, but a small scale pumping system, including array, support structures, wiring, and a jack-pump, would run about $2500. That's pretty heavy bread for a Sahel community in places like Burkina Faso or South Sudan.

I guess the botom line is that, like the article says, finding the aquifers does not necessarily mean tha everything will be peachy-keen any time soon.

Not if you use hand-pumps.

Rice? Why use that example?

Interesting you use Sudan as an example too.

The whole Darfur psyop was used to create animosity towards the Sudanese government which is building large scale modern water projects.

There is another aspect to this as well. When you green the desert, you change the climate. For the better.

Luvapottamus  Wrote:

Not if you use hand-pumps.

Yes, even if you use hand-pumps.
Sorry, that's not what I meant. I meant don't use hand pumps. The article says use hand pumps, I say don't.
Drilling a small bore-hole and procuring a hand-pump is not tremendously expensive, but the power to operate a pump isn't based on how much the pump costs or how much it costs to poke the hole in the ground.

My calculation was based on the power required to lift the column of water. It doesn't matter if the power comes from someone pumping by hand, or an electric moter running a jack-pump. It's going to be 167 W or 0.22 HP either way -- and that's assuming a pump with 100 percent efficiency (although it does crank in some pipe friction, drawdown, and an engineering safety factor).

Luvapottamus  Wrote:

Rice? Why use that example?

I didn't use rice, one of the scientists quoted in the article did. Rice is pretty water-intensive, and it requires a pretty extensive infrstructure to build and maintain a paddy, especially with the fact that the water would evaporate pretty fast, given the high surface area-to-volume ratio. It sounds to me like a bad choice; I'd think millet would be a better one.

Living in a dry area myself, I think the best crops for sustainment in an arid area would be corn, beans, and squash, along with some fairly water-stingy dark greens and maybe turnips, carrots, and sweet potatoes.
Agreed, wasn't criticizing you, just the prissy article writer.
Luvapottamus  Wrote:

Interesting you use Sudan as an example too.

Well, it is very densely crowded, has a good aquifer as shown on the map, and Ghod knows the people there need the water. Why is that surprising?
It's not, just ironic.
Luvapottamus  Wrote:

The whole Darfur psyop was used to create animosity towards the Sudanese government which is building large scale modern water projects.

I'm more interested in the engineering aspects.
They could use your help I'm sure. But they need large scale water projects, and power plants, not hand pumps and solar ovens.
Luvapottamus  Wrote:

There is another aspect to this as well. When you green the desert, you change the climate. For the better.

Good point; I didn't think of that. Certainly, additional plants will suck up CO2 and generate O2; that can't hurt. And the root systems would slow or stop desertification, even if the temperature were to increase.

Luvapottamus  Wrote:

This article and the posts above illustrate Her Royal malignant intent towards Africa.

Hand pumps.

Nigeria can't afford drilling because of the cost of oil?

Colonialists have kept Africa primitive on purpose, and now rednecks think these people are stupid.

This article and the posts above illustrate Her Royal malignant intent towards Africa.

Hand pumps.

Nigeria can't afford drilling because of the cost of oil?

Colonialists have kept Africa primitive on purpose, and now rednecks think these people are stupid.

Luvapottamus  Wrote:

This article and the posts above illustrate Her Royal malignant intent towards Africa.

Hand pumps.

Nigeria can't afford drilling because of the cost of oil?

Colonialists have kept Africa primitive on purpose, and now rednecks think these people are stupid.

Thats one of the funniest things I've read lately.

Its a good thing that its all someone elses fault and not the natives doing it to themselves.