What is the use of a Vacuum Pump?

A vacuum pump is basically a device that pumps air or water out of a sealed container to make a vacuum. We would like to discuss the different uses of a vacuum pump in this blog.

There are many industrial uses, and the most common is probably the electric lamp. An electric lamp uses a vacuum pump to take gas out from the bulb enabling it to light. Besides this, vacuum pumps are also used in the processing of semi-conductors. But this is not the end of the story. In air crafts, the gyroscopes of some flight instruments are powered by a vacuum source of power in case there is an electrical failure.

There are several types of vacuum pumps just as there are many uses for them. While classification is a complicated process, it is possible to narrow them to 2 broad categories, namely the transfer pump and the entrapment pump. Entrapment pump traps molecules within a confined space. Some examples are cryopump and the ion pump. The former traps liquified gas molecules while the latter traps ionized gas.

On the other hand, a transfer pump uses momentum to, for instance, transfer gas from the vacuum to the exhaust, as in the case of a turbo-molecular pump.

Vacuum pumps can also be classified as either mechanical or compressed air. Working off the Bernoulli principle, a compressed-air pump relies on the differences in pressure to create a vacuum. Meanwhile, the mechanical vacuum pump has an electrical motor as a power source, although it can also use an internal combustion engine, drawing air from a closed volume and releasing it to the atmosphere.

Probably the most popular mechanical vacuum pump is the rotating-vane, which has individual rotors around a shaft that spin at high velocities. With this, the air is trapped and taken through the intake port, leaving a vacuum behind it.

As you can see from above, the simple vacuum pump has several uses across different industries. It is basically a general type of device that only has one function, however, it can be customized and added to in order to fulfill the needs of a particular industry.