How far below the static water level do you plan to release air? That information will be required to determine the amount of air pressure (psi) that will be required before any air will be emitted.
Pumping air into the well is not a good idea as it will cause elements in the water such as iron, manganese, H2S etc that are in a dissolved state, to become oxidized which will cause them to be converted to a non dissolved state which will precipitate out from the water and will likely to accumulate in the well until the pump begins to pump them out as sludge.
A full comprehensive lab test report for your raw well water will be required so as to identify elements that will be affected by oxidation.
Treating the problem after the water exits the well is usually the better course of action.
I just measured the well and hit water at 22' and the bottom at 140'. I'm thinking I would start by sinking the air line most of the way to the bottom which would still only be about 50PSI.
Sludge buildup is definitely a concern and maybe it is the good reason not to do it at all. Was thinking that possibly the answer to that would be to just occasionally either crank the air up to full blast or otherwise create a bunch of turbulence at the bottom and just pump it out periodically. Don't know if that's realistic and/or worth it though. I realize I'm definitely out in experimental territory here. On the other hand if the iron and sulfur reducing bacteria are anaerobic and will be creating their own sludge if I do nothing, controlling them should at least partially offset the deposits that I'd be creating by oxidizing contaminants directly, no?
Also, while introducing air is unconventional, the results in terms of sludge buildup wouldn't be much different than using a dry pellet chlorinator on the well, would they? But without the potentially damaging effects of chlorine on the equipment? That seems somewhat uncommon but definitely something that is done and I've seen it well-recommended here from time to time. I haven't deeply researched it but I also haven't seen an overwhelming amount of people complaining about sludging up their well with those. But perhaps I just haven't found them because I haven't looked hard enough yet.
A water test is on the way. Unfortunately the post office seems to have misplaced my test kit. Agree that it's of course impossible to know what's going on for sure until that comes through.
Not arguing with you about the better course of action overall, as the number of systems I've managed to date is exactly one (prior to this), so I definitely lack experience. But I do have a few reasons for being interested in trying to solve it at the source:
1) It seems like once you've got an SRB problem in the well, the only real long-term solution is chlorination, or otherwise people seem to have periodic breakthroughs where the water heater or plumbing gets infected and things get bad no matter how good the filtration works. I really don't want to do chlorination because of the concern over the disinfection by products. Not that I wouldn't if it was the only answer, but I'd love to avoid it if possible.
2) The well feeds three separate structures, a house that will be used part time, a full time rental cottage, and a barn where the water will be used regularly. The house and the cottage will have some form of filtration, but the barn likely will not. Prior to shocking the well, even washing hands in the barn was pretty disgusting. Right now it's outstanding, and if I could keep it that way it would be a big bonus. Also just in terms of cost and maintenance, if those two systems can be simpler and with less or no consumables, that would be a bigger than usual bonus, given that there will be two of them.
3) The idea has just grabbed my curiosity. I'm curious if e.g. perhaps there's some proper level of aeration that disturbs things enough to limit the bacterial growth but also doesn't cause all the contaminants to precipitate.
So in short I'm probably not going to be able to resist sinking an air line and playing with it. But I will definitely do a water test prior to doing so and then test again after it's had some time to run and so on.