Uses Of Liquid Ring Pump In Agriculture
The use of vacuum is essential in various applications in agriculture, such as barge loading, conveying, dehydrating, flash cooling, and milking. The powerful suction force is put to the test in the agricultural industry.
Barge unloading of grain, beans, and other small bulk agricultural products is a major method of transportation across agriculturally prolific areas of the world. With such large amounts of agricultural product being transported, the need for quick and efficient unloading became immediately clear. One method of unloading is by vacuum. Tubes are inserted into the cargo containers and run for long distances to load onto trucks or into silos. Vacuum barge unloading and loading has the advantages of transporting things like grain at high speeds in an environment with less dust and suspended particulate matter, which can stay on the grain and require much more thorough and time-consuming cleaning steps downstream in processing.
Any plant product contains latent heat in the form of moisture, as it requires much for the trapped water to expel heat. When the product is stored in a chamber evacuated of air, the boiling point of water drastically decreases, and it begins to evaporate. In this way, the latent heat is expelled, cooling the product. At warmer temperatures, bacteria reproduction is encouraged and mold begins to grow in tandem with a moist environment. With a colder, drier environment, both of these detriments can be avoided. This airtight chamber can be achieved with the use of vacuum in a process known as vacuum cooling.
Milking involves the extraction of raw dairy material from mammalian livestock, including goats and cows. In modern society, automated milking systems have been developed and are currently in widespread use. One of these milking systems involves the cleaning (dipping) of udders by spraying or soaking the teats with disinfectant spray before using vacuum to draw the product from the livestock in a way that complies with humane treatment and sanitary extraction. This translates to gentle and contained extraction, which requires precise control of the vacuum level and mass flow rate.
Much farming equipment is “powered” by the pressurization and ejection of air through vacuum compressors. These include water pumps like sprinklers and crop sprayers for pesticides and liquid manures. Pneumatic tools such as nail guns and staple guns are also made useful through the compression of air brought about by vacuum compressors. The vacuum compressors take in ambient air at atmospheric pressure and compress the molecules beyond that pressure, sometimes by seven or eight times.
Applications of Liquid Ring Vacuum Pumps
Liquid ring vacuum pumps are used for the transport of bulk agricultural cargo that is deemed fit for wet transport. Slurries such as rice slurry or dairy slurry can be transported at high speeds across wide distances from barge to silo quickly. The oxidation of organic material across such a large distance is prevented through the initial evacuation of air by the pump within the piping that creates the siphoning effect on the slurries. The liquid ring vacuum pump is able to pump these slurries without so much as a blink’s worth of fluctuation in vacuum level. Such small solids as grain, beans, and other plant products pose no issue for the liquid ring vacuum pump, which may come in handy even for drier applications.
Vacuum cooling requires a pump that is able to handle wet processes because the entire process is dependent on the extraction of latent heat through evaporation at very low pressures. The liquid ring vacuum pump is able to provide the wet-processing, constant deep suction that creates the ideal environment for vacuum cooling and the worst environment for mold and bacteria growth. The level of vacuum can be controlled to a maximum of 28” Hg with a two-stage liquid ring vacuum pump, which is more than sufficient for vacuum cooling applications.
The same advantages that make the liquid ring vacuum pump favorable for vacuum cooling also make it favorable for milking application. The wet-processing, high-efficiency, controlled and constant suction from the pump allow for gentle treatment of livestock and quick extraction of dairy products. Slugs of liquid pass through the pump with ease, and oxidation is prevented through the evacuation of ambient air. The milk is transported quickly for efficient storage and processing. The liquid ring vacuum pump boasts low maintenance and robust design for easy repair and long-lasting service life.
Farming equipment such as crop sprayers and water pumps use compressed air in mixture with liquid to create a high-velocity spraying across crops. The higher the pressure, the higher velocity, and the wider range the sprayer will be able to reach. If the liquid is able to mix with the lubrication in oil-lubricated vacuum pumps, sludge is created, which can potentially clog the pump at worst and hinder the performance of the pump at best. However, with the minimal lubrication and wet-processing power of the liquid ring vacuum pump, the mixture of liquid and air is non-problematic and easy. The centrifugal nature of the pump also translates to uninterrupted compression. Any flammable pesticides will be treated gently by the isothermal compression of the liquid ring, and the pump itself can be built with proper metallurgy to make it corrosion-proof against more abrasive and corrosive chemical agents used for crop treatment.