The Vacuum Pump

Pumps, in whatever shape, size, or color they come, are something that most of us give particular importance to, yet they play a very important role in our daily life. These things normally catch our attention and we often don’t have to be so concerned with them. However, it is also important to know a little about the things that make our everyday existence a little bit easier.

It is just a water pump, yes. But have you ever thought about what these things can do when you are faced with problems at home? What do you do when there’s no one else around to help you get rid of the flood in your basement? Or, how do you fix that clog in your sink, or toilet? This is when you realize you need that vacuum pump to help you solve those miseries.

A vacuum pump is by no means a new design concept. Various pumps for water and gases that have come and gone with varying success have been in use for hundreds of years. An early predecessor to the vacuum pump came in the form of suction pump. This was invented by Arab engineer way back in the 12^th century.

The first prototype of the vacuum pump was conceptualized during the 15^th century. This design reached Europe in the form of the six-cylinder Monobloc device which could create a partial vacuum via a series of weights and pistons. This paved the way for newer vacuum designs during the early days.

The idea of the first vacuum pump did not instantly become such a hit. It took several years more for the device to convince people that it is in fact a great equipment to tackle water problems.

Vacuum pumps proved to be ideal by the 17^th century but the concept was not understood and it took a bunch of scientists, inventors and engineers to grasp the vacuum process and how it could solve the previous problems of not being able to pump water above a certain height.  Gaspar Berti, Evangelista Torricelli and Galileo played very crucial roles in the development of the vacuum pump technology.

The first real vacuum pump was manufactured in 1654 by Otto von Guericke. He conducted an experiment to prove that if the air was taken from a whole then there was no amount of force that could divide or separate the two halves of that whole.

This seemed to convince the early engineers. A few more tests were performed until 1855 when Heinrich Geissler took vacuum pumps to a new level using the mercury displacement pump method.

There are now three types of vacuum pump: the positive displacement pump (best for low vacuum needs); the momentum transfer pump (otherwise known as molecular pump, one of the most common vacuum pumps in use today); and the entrapment pump (best used for ultra-high vacuum tasks).

These pumps can be used in medical processes, ophthalmic applications, glass coating, analytical instruments, electric lamps production, freeze-drying and even sewage applications.