This guide is going to help you to choose a right water pump step by step. In fact, it's not as simple as you think.
At first, you need to know water pumps can be classified according to many different dimensions. If it was classified according to the use, it includes booster pump, transfer pump, sewage pump, metering pump, and so on. If it was classified by its material, it includes cast iron pump, cast aluminium pump, stainless steel pump, engineering plastic pump, and so on. If it was classified by drive power, it includes gasoline water pump, diesel water pump, electric AC water pump, electric DC water pump, and etc. If according to the pump's applications, there will be too many types and very hard to be counted.
There are many other dimensions, such as single-stage or multi-stage, vertical or horizontal, unable one by one cited. But the most commonly used classification method is based on the pump's principle. In this article, we mainly use this method to classify the water pumps. Based on this classification method, the pumps currently on the market mainly include the following types:
Centrifugal water pump uses the centrifugal force generated by the impeller to transfer the fluid. The centrifugal force typically comes from an engine or electric motor. Centrifugal pump can serve long-time continuous operation and has a long lifespan. It is the most widely used type of water pump.
Diaphragm water pump is another common type of water pump. It relies on the reciprocating action of a membrane to change the working chamber volume to transfer the fluid. Compare to the centrifugal pump, diaphragm pump could generate an extremely high pressure. But it often has a small flow rate, a short lifespan, and a loud noise.
Peristaltic pump uses a rotor with a number of “rollers” to squeeze a flexible tube to transfer fluid. It is often used in the pharmaceutical or chemical industry to get a constant accurate flow rate.
The above three principles of the pumps contained the vast majority of pumps on the market. You may know other principles pumps, such as jet pump, gear pump, plunger pump, but that is not in our discussion today.
After figuring out the above problems, the process of choosing a pump becomes clearly, but still difficult. To keep it simpler, next we will narrow down the problem as “how to choose an electric centrifugal water pump”. Because the centrifugal pump can meet most of your requirements. For other types of pumps, you can refer these steps.
You should give priority to some of the above steps based on your actual needs. You may also have other special requirements, if you are not sure whether the pump can meet all of your requirements, the best way is to contact the pump manufacturer's technicians, let them help you to select a right water pump.