Basic Concept of a Pump

A pump in general is a machine which imparts energy to anything flowing through it. This can be any fluid, heat or even electrons. The devices pumping heat are called as heat pumps and electrical batteries can pump electrons. The spontaneous tendency of anything is to flow from high potential to low potential and this natural tendency is harnessed in many applications. But the pump does exactly the reverse; it forces something to move from low potential to high potential. For this purpose pumps use energy and by their functioning that transfer that energy to the substance flowing through them.
Fluid pumps or Hydraulic pumps move fluids and displace them from one position to another and in course energizes them. In fluids this energy is manifested as its pressure and velocity. Similarly, heat pumps move heat from low temperature to high temperature against its natural tendency to flow from high temperature to low temperature. An electrical battery is also a type of pump; it pumps electrons in a circuit from low electrical potential to high electrical potential which is against the spontaneous tendency of electrons to move from high electrical potential to low electrical potential. Hence, an electrical battery can be called as an Electron Pump.

Hydraulic Pump Construction

Basically a fluid pump or hydraulic pump is a device or machine having moving mechanical components which uses energy from some source, generally electrical, supplied to it in form of mechanical energy by electrical motor.
Generally pumps have rotating parts run by the electrical motors. The rotating parts of pumps can be some volume defining components which can form an enclosed envelope of volume where the fluid can captured and displaced. Other type of rotating parts can be blades mounted on discs or shafts which rotate with the driving power and transfers that to the fluid by making it move with increased velocity.

 

 

Basic Working Principle

In simple words we consider a pump to be a black box to understand its working. Fluid enters a pump at certain velocity and pressure, which may be even zero, and leaves it with increased energy, that is, velocity and pressure. For this a pump consumes a certain amount of energy from any external source. Now, what is happening inside that black box? There are rotating components inside which move the fluid either by confining it in definite volumes and then displacing it or by imparting energy to the fluid by dynamic action of the moving parts and increasing velocity and pressure of the fluid.

History

In 1772 John Whitehurst of Cheshire in the United Kingdom invented a manually controlled precursor of the hydraulic ram called the "pulsation engine". The first one he installed, in 1772 at Oulton, Cheshire, raised water to a height of 16 ft (4.9 m).He installed another in an Irishproperty in 1783. He did not patent it, and details are obscure, but it is known to have had an air vessel.

The first self-acting ram pump was invented by the Frenchman Joseph Michel Montgolfier (best known as a co-inventor of the hot air balloon) in 1796 for raising water in his paper mill at Voiron. His friend Matthew Boulton took out a British patent on his behalf in 1797. The sons of Montgolfier obtained an English patent for an improved version in 1816, and this was acquired, together with Whitehurst's design, in 1820 byJosiah Easton, a Somerset-born engineer who had just moved to London.

Easton's firm, inherited by his son James (1796–1871), grew during the nineteenth century to become one of the more important engineering manufacturers in the United Kingdom, with a large works at Erith, Kent. They specialised in water supply and sewerage systems world-wide, as well as land drainage projects. Eastons had a good business supplying rams for water supply purposes to large country houses, and also to farms and village communities, and a number of their installations still survived as of 2004.

The firm was eventually closed in 1909, but the ram business was continued by James R Easton. In 1929 it was acquired by Green & Carter of Winchester, Hampshire, who were engaged in the manufacturing and installation of the well-known Vulcan andVacher Rams.