Tesla Pumps for Agriculture?

With my ongoing experimentation with agriculture, as well as plans for further experimentation, one of the things I have to solve is a simple water pumping problem. In the area, everyone seems to be using diesel powered water pumps - but I don't really want to do that. I don't have a large warchest for finance; what I have is a bit of knowledge and an unstable internet connection.

At first I was considering a simple 12V or 24V DC pump. The 12V could be powered directly from a vehicle battery, as well as renewable energy sources. The 24V DC pump would be ideal for renewable energy applications since the higher voltage would also allow less loss of energy along the cables as the pump is driven. But all the pumps I looked at were simply drawing too many amperes to be of worth for the applications I see in the future. Factor in the cost, and suddenly renewable energy is less attractive to a startup - the cost for panels, batteries and a pump which can handle about 40 feet of head ('head' is most simply explained as the amount of standing water that can be pumped upward from the pump).

One of the most horrid things about the sellers of water pumps is the fact that you rarely can search on the criteria on which you want to choose a pump. Instead of filling out a web form with the criteria of voltage, amperes, head and gallons per minute... the person looking for a pump for a specific application has to drink deeply of the brochures and get used to thinking, "no, that's not it."

While searching around as effectively as possible, I remembered the Tesla Engine Builder Association and Tesla's Turbine. Developed in 1912 for future aircraft applications, the combination pump and engine never really took off. The design is relatively simple, since it uses the boundary layer effect - discs on a shaft in a casing through which fluid enters and exits. And there I was, staring at a pile of CDs.

Here's a video of a Tesla Turbine driving a Tesla pump:

And remember I mentioned CDs?

And here is how that was made:

So it might be possible to recycle old CDs - of which I have plenty - and use them to pump water. But I face the same lack of information; Tesla Engines/Pumps have little actual documentation on the amount of head a pump can produce, and at what pressure. Specifically with the Tesla Engines, everyone seems intent on demonstrating the engine side of it but not the fluid pump side. How big of a pump does one need? How far apart should the CDs be for water? All of that information would be useful, but is lacking.

So one of the new projects is to find out that information - which means building my own prototype and testing with it. The main resource available for this is CDTurbine.com... when I get the equipment together and the time, I'll start looking at whether this is feasible for agricultural/aquacultural applications.

Some initial thoughts for this include a 12V high RPM motor (9,000 RPM +) and 2 or more tesla pumps in parallel running off the same motor. The reasoning for that would be a matter of the width of the portal exit of the pumps; the number of CDs would be determined by the spacing and the width of the exhaust - plus structural limitations. 9,000 RPM should be a safe speed to operate the CD turbine at, given that testing by other people has demonstrated safe operation well above 9,000 RPM. But that's just an initial thought....