This post is about moving a lot of air.
Farken I have used shop type air compressors.
The first I used was an old 1 cylinder oil-less compressor. The piston attaches to a rubber diaphragm sandwiched between the cylinder and head. It pumped more air then I needed so I had it on a timer. It would fill an air tank then shut off. When the air tank pressure was low it would cycle again. A regulator kept the air supply at a constant pressure.
When that died I purchased a 2 cylinder oil type compress and used a decent oil trap.
Neither of these are idea solutions because it is expensive to compress the air. The oil less would be OK if you could use the air and did not need to store it under pressure.
Too more practical air movers are the regenerative pump and the rotary vane pump. They supply air at a low pressure so you either have to use it or bleed it off. Currently I am running a ghast regenerative air pump. It spins a disk with vanes on it. They are expensive but I have seen used ones at surplus places. These last nearly forever. The only wear parts are the motor bearing and they are replaceable.
The rotoary vane pump is/was used for auto smog pumps, medical vacuum pump and cockpit air pressure in small aircraft. I setup an auto smog pump for pond use after seeing one at a koi and goldfish farm. The used ones only lasted a year or two. (the first version was much more refined, by the 3rd one it just had to work) Maybe all they needed was a cleaning but they were cheap so I just replaced them with another from the junk yard. They were on mostly 70s vintage cars which are getting hard to find in junk yards now.
I stopped using this setup over 10 years ago when I found my regenerative blower.
Recently I acquired an medical grade rotary vane pump. I am told that these are replace
on a schedule so there should be working used ones around.
This is my regenerative blower which was originally used to supply air to fish only pet shop.
