Industrial vacuum pumps – An introduction and overview

You wake up in the morning, brush your teeth, sit at your dining table, have a cup of coffee, get into your car, work on your laptop, make a few calls on your smartphone, drink a can of your favourite beverage or perhaps even have a chicken salad for lunch. Almost all the products used to this point and many more products we use every day have been manufactured with the help of an industrial vacuum pump which uses low energy.

Vacuum, often called the fourth industrial utility is essential to almost all modern industrial production process. Vacuum pump for industrial applications provide a steady supply of vacuum for a clean environment or when the process requires pressure below atmospheric levels. An Industrial vacuum pump is basically  air pump optimized to work with inlet pressures below atmospheric pressure. Industrial vacuum pump or industrial vacuum systems are rough or 'fore' vacuum pumps are a specific subset of vacuum pump technology designed to bring down the atmospheric pressure to the process demand level. There are multiple companies who provide industrial vacuum pumps and Atlas Copco is one of  the major Industrial vacuum pump manufacturers in India.

The first person to demonstrate the force of vacuum was a German called Otto Von Guericke in the mid-17th century. He realized that by removing the gas from the space between two hemispheres, the net forces of the surrounding air pressure would hold those hemispheres together. Modern vacuum pumps for industrial applications work on similar principles. They primarily remove air or gas molecules from areas of lower gas density at the inlet to areas of higher gas density at the exhaust. Industrial vacuum pumps are ideal for applications that require low or rough vacuum (Atmosphere to 1.0 mbar) and medium vacuum (1 to 10^-3 mbar).  

While the basic principles of vacuum remain the same, there are different vacuum technologies for specific industrial use, primarily categorized as wet vacuum pumps or dry vacuum pumps. 

Wet vacuum pumps are further segmented into Oil-sealed Vacuum Pumps and Liquid Ring Vacuum Pumps. These pumps primarily use oil or water as a sealant to help pump the air or gas. The basic principles of vacuum apply as the oil-sealed vacuum pump works by mechanically trapping air or gases and moving them through the pump, creating lower pressure towards the inlet.

Atlas Copco has been a leading Industrial Vacuum Pump manufacturer in India with various oil sealed vacuum pumps as below:

• Oil-Sealed Rotary vane vacuum pumps (Single Stage and Double Stage)
• Oil-Sealed Piston pumps
• Oil-Sealed Screw vacuum pumps

Atlas Copco’s oil screw pump, GHS VSD⁺ won the distinction of being recognized by the Confederation of Indian Industry as Innovative Energy Saving Product in 2020 at the 21^st National Award for Excellence in Energy Management 2020.

Liquid ring vacuum pumps, also known as water-ring vacuum pumps in many instances, uses water or other solvent liquids to compress air or gases using specially designed impellers that are housed within the vacuum pump. One of the oldest technologies in vacuum pump industrial use are liquid ring vacuum pump where liquid is introduced into the pump and the impeller rotates rapidly to create a ring. This ring in turn forms seals in between the impellers trapping molecules of air or gas. Liquid ring pumps typically are available in large capacities and are highly tolerant of contaminant ingress, making them suitable for applications that are humid, moist or even dirty. 

The main advantage of dry vacuum pumps is that there is no lubrication in the main vacuum pumping chamber thus eliminating the contamination of the process. They play an important role in many vacuum pump industrial use, vacuum applications and environments. A more recent development in the history of vacuum technology, dry vacuum pumps are cleaner and more environment friendly as they have no dirty oil to dispose. While the basic principles of vacuum are constant, dry industrial vacuum pumps are offered in a range of technologies.

Examples of dry vacuum pumps are:

• Side Channel vacuum blowers
• Dry Vane vacuum pumps
• Dry claw vacuum pumps
• Dry Screw vacuum pumps

As one of the leading industrial vacuum pump manufacturers in India, we have maintained a sustained focus on energy efficiency in different industries and applications. Our pumps are often the starting point to providing a total vacuum solution with either dedicated point-of-use vacuum pumps and centralized industrial vacuum pump systems.