Pumps and compressors

By Chris Woodford. Last updated: January 8,

2014.

ome

inventions

are

glamorousmicrochips and fiber-

optic cables spring to mind. Others are quieter and more humble,
but no less important. Pumps and compressors certainly fall into
that category. Try to picture life without them and you won't get
very far. Take away pumps and you'll have nothing to push hot
water through your home central-heating pipes, and no way to
remove the heat from your refrigerator. Might as well start
walking too, because you won't be able to blow up the tires on
your bicycle or put gasoline in your car. From jackhammers to air
conditioners, all kinds of machines use pumps and compressors to
move liquids and gases from place to place. Let's take a closer
look at how they work!
Photo: A fuel pump operating in the desert. The pump is drawing liquid in through the hose on
the left and pushing it out through the hoses on the right. Pumps play a vital part in supplying
our energy by transporting liquids such as oil and natural gas down long pipelines. Photo by
Derek D. Meitzer courtesy of US Marine Corps and Defense Imagery.

How to move solids, liquids, and gases

Suppose you want to move a solid block of metal. There's little
choice in how to go about it: you have to pick it up and carry it.
But if you want to move liquids or gases,
things are a whole lot easier. That's because they move with only
a little bit of help from us. We call liquids and
gases fluids because they flow down channels and pipes from
one place to another. They don't, however, move without some
help. It takes energy to move things and usually we have to
provide that ourselves. Sometimes liquids and gases do have
stored potential energy that they can use to move themselves (for
example, rivers flow downhill from source to sea by using the

force of gravity), but often we want to move them to places where

they wouldn't normally goand for that we need pumps and
compressors. (You can read more about solids, liquids, and gases
in our article on states of matter.)

What's the difference between a pump and

a compressor?

Sometimes the words "pump" and "compressor" are used

interchangeably, but there is a difference:
A pump is a machine that moves a fluid
(either liquid or gas) from one place to
another.
A compressor is a machine that squeezes a
gas into a smaller volume and (often) pumps
it somewhere else at the same time.
While pumps can work on either liquids or gases, compressors
generally work only on gases. That's because liquids are very
difficult to compress. The atoms and molecules from which liquids
are made are so tightly packed that you can't really squeeze them
any closer together (an important piece of science that's put to
very good use in hydraulic machines).Pressure washers, which
make a powerful jet of water for cleaning things, are an exception:
they work by squeezing liquids to higher pressures and
speeds. Coffee machines also squeeze water to high pressure to
make stronger and tastier drinks.

Photo: Pump or compressor? If it has a pressure gauge on it and the pressure increases as
you pump, technically it's also working as a compressor. With this foot pump, as you inflate
your car tires, you're pumping and compressing at the same time. Even so, you wouldn't
really describe this as an air compressor, because it's job is really to move air from the
atmosphere into your tires. A compressor is normally designed to make use of compressed air
in some way, for example, by powering a jackhammer (pneumatic air drill).

How do pumps work?

There are really just two different kinds of pumps: reciprocating

pumps (which pump by moving alternately back-and-forth)
and rotary pumps (which spin around). Bicycle pumps are
perhaps the most familiar examples of reciprocating pumps. They
have a piston that moves back and forth inside a cylinder,
alternately drawing in air from outside (when you pull out the
handle) and pushing it into the rubber tire (when you push the
handle back in again). One or more valvesensure that the air
you've drawn into the pump doesn't go straight back out again
the way it came. It's worth noting, incidentally, that bicycle
pumps are actually air compressors because they force air from
the atmosphere into the closed space of the rubber tire, reducing
its volume and increasing its pressure.
Photo: Foot pumps are familiar examples of reciprocating pumps: they move air as you push
your foot up and down. With this pump, you put your foot on the black lever at the top and
pump your leg up and down, making the red cylinder move back and forth. A valve inside the
cylinder lets air in (when you raise your leg), which is then pumped out through the black
hose on the right (when you lower your leg). A gauge on the top of the pump (on the right)
shows the air pressure in the tire in Imperial units (bars and pounds per square inch or psi).

Rotary pumps work a completely different way using a spinning

wheel called an impeller (which is a bit like a propeller fitted
snugly in the middle of a closed system of pipes). Angled blades
mounted on the impeller draw water (for example) through an
inlet pipe, spin it around at speed, and then force it out through
an outlet pipe, usually pointed in the opposite direction. Devices
like this are sometimes called centrifugal pumps because they
fling the fluid outward by making it spin around (a bit like the way
a clothes washer gets your jeans dry by spinning them at high
speed).
Rotary pumps work in exactly the opposite way to turbines.
Where a turbine captures energy from a liquid or gas that's
moving of its own accord (for example, the wind in the air around
us or the water flowing in a river), a pump uses energy (typically
supplied through an electric motor) to move a fluid from place to
place.
Photo: Left: A typical rotary pump used in firefighting. The impeller is inside the silver housing
under the black circular case. Photo by Melrose Afaese courtesy of US Navy.

Using pumps and compressors

There are pumps inside virtually any machine that uses liquids,
from car
engines (which
need
to
pump
fuel)
to dishwashers (where a pump cycles hot water round the tub)
and personal water craft (powered through the water by a highpressure jet of water pushing backward).

Unlike machines based around pumps, machines that use

compressors don't work simply by moving a fluid: they also
harness the energy that was stored inside the fluid when it was
originally compressed. It takes energy to compress a gas, but that
energy doesn't vanish into thin air and it isn't wasted. It's stored
inside the gas and you can use it again later, whenever you like,
by allowing the gas to move elsewhere (gas springs, used in office
chairs and the hinges that hold open the tailgates of cars, are a
good example of this).
Lots of machines (such as jackhammers) use highly pressurized
air from a compressor to do useful jobswe say
they'repneumatic (a word that generally means air-powered
machine). In a jackhammer, for example, the pressurized air
pushes a drill bit back and forth when it's released through a long
pipe. (You may have noticed that a jackhammer is attached to a
big air compressor machine by a large air hose.) Compressed air
is also used for cleaning things like stone blocks. Another really
important use is in powering the air brakes in trains, trucks, and
buses. To stop a really big vehicle quickly, you can't rely on the
pressure supplied by a driver's leg, as you can in a car (where the
brakes are hydraulic). Instead, truck and train brakes are powered
by compressed air that's released when the driver pushes a
pedal. You may have heard a sudden whooshing sound after
trucks have stopped suddenly. That's compressed air being
released after it pushes the brakes against the wheels to bring
them to rest.

Photo: Right: A typical pump impeller. Photo courtesy of NASA Marshall Image Exchange
(MiX).

REFRENCE:
http://www.explainthatstuff.com/pumpcompressor.html