Reversible Unsaturated Hydraulic Siphon
(US Pat 6,766,817)
Advanced Hydrology from Soil Physics and Hydrogeology are disciplines offering common knowledge to handle fluids moving on porosity that has been learned from natural porosity functioning in more than a century of studies. Such conceptions were then introduced in Hydrology in 1856 by Henry Darcy for Saturated Flow and later in 1907 by Edgard Buckingham for Unsaturated flow. Granular porosity is not so reliable to allow such insights but recent technological advance of fiber technology as well as heat transfer modeling surface of heat tubes allows the molding of precise fine tuned microporosity to build such devices exploiting betters the intricate complexity of hydrodynamics.
Unsaturated siphon is device to transfer fluid reversibly between two compartments employing properties of unsaturated flow between saturated and unsaturated hydraulic zones (Fig. 1).
Under gravity conditions fluid is transferred between places of different unsaturated hydraulic gradient and the Unsaturated Siphon is in a format of upsided 'U' to connect two compartments to transfer fluid taking advantages of hydraulic zones.
Fluid at (C) has a maximu rise (-) refential for each porosity moving fluid upward attending a solid attraction from adhesion-cohesion property of luids toward itself and the solid surface of porosity. When fluid is moving throughout un Unsaturated Siphon firt it moves upward as unsaturated flow and then laterally dropping afterwards to another compartment. As the fluid crosses the water table reference the fluid connectivity loses the connection as the fluid becomes saturated and dropping by its own gravity pull. The fluid transfer takes place till the entire Unsaturated Siphon bears any level of fluid matric gradient.
Fig. 2 shows that the Unsaturated Siphon can have a reversible flow whenever the fluid matric gradient changes direction. Initially fluid moves from A to B continuously until it attains a balance as portrayed at C and D. The unsaturated flow changes direction from F to E reverting the fluid flow.