What is a liquid-ring pump? This is a common question, but this is easily answered. A liquid ring pump is normally used in vacuuming and pumping out liquids, which are commonly used in power plants, water treatment facilities, and even some home-based equipment. There are also other industrial uses for this, which aid in the creation of numerous consumer materials. We’re going to explain in this article just a little bit about how a liquid ring vacuum pump works.
The Cycle
The liquid vacuum pump works much like a sump pump does, except it doesn’t use actual air in order to push the liquid being fed into it forward. Think of it like being a siphon. When you siphon water, you’re using natural propulsion in order to move the water forward. The difference is, with large amounts of water, or liquids on an industrial level, you can’t just simply rely on gravity to feed your water system. That’s where a liquid ring vacuum pump works.
- Air or gas is fed into the chamber and causes the rotor blades inside the pump to spin. By doing this, it furthermore helps to push the liquid out the other side.
- Water is cyclone inside of the pump by the rotor blades. While the air or gas goes into the input port of the pump, the cyclonic action pushes the compressed gas or liquid into the small collection chamber to allow for compression to take place.
- On the other side of the intake section, the rotor continues to draw in air (or gas) and create a suction force that is like a piston (similar to the way pistons create a vacuum inside of a cylinder of a motor). However, on the other outlet side, there is more and more pressure building up.
- When compression occurs, the energy is stored and as the pump continued to build pressure, the gas or air ends up being pushed into this container, and then ultimately being released and forced into the outlet chamber.
- When this discharge occurs, because of the conical shape of the internal rotors and chambers, the air or gas continued to flow freely out the right continuously. This means there’s no pause because the compression system is constantly being replenished with compressed air or gas, while the pump itself is pushing the air or gas out of it.
Conclusion
These special pumps are used as mentioned before in various industrial facilities. The reason for this is simple – they provide a continuous flow of whatever material is being forced into them without a pause, and this increases sustainability, as well as productivity in most cases.
There are multiple types of pumps, ranging from single to what they call multi-stage vacuums. Why do they call them liquid ring pumps you wonder? That answer is also simple. Usually, the ring inside of the pump is filled with liquid. Sometimes it is water that is forced into it, and in other application purposes, they may use an acid. Otherwise, they are sealed with oil as their internal solvent.