A team of scientists at the Brno University of Technology, working in partnership with Prof. Pochylý, have long been at the forefront in this field, not only in Europe but worldwide as well. Academics are cooperating closely with pump manufacturers from many different countries and welcome designers from these companies coming to Brno to enhance their knowledge and improve their qualifications. 

Thus the task outlined in the introduction does indeed represent for our scientists a genuine long-term challenge. Now they have achieved another success and are presenting a design for a new construction of a plunger pump which with support from the BUT Technology Transfer Office has been granted protection as a utility model. Details are available at the website of the Industrial Property Office.

Piston pumps, or more precisely plunger plumps (a plunger is a type of piston which is also a piston rod), are currently used in a number of sectors where operation requires high pressures or where precise and easy dosing is desirable (e.g. the power industry, health care and the food industry etc.). They are often driven by motors with a crank mechanism of some kind, which means, however, that some of their generally positive characteristics are restricted – their structure is more complex, maintenance is more demanding, the pressure of the pumped liquid is more limited etc. The Brno scientists have focused on suppressing these very disadvantages, and have designed a construction for a plunger pump driven by a rotary electromotor which is connected to the plunger via a ball screw. Thus they have managed to eliminate some of the known disadvantages of this system and advance the progress of one technology for pumping liquid by another step.

Figure: Principle of ball screw

In this solution the pump is structurally relatively simple and thus more economical in production terms. A ball screw is highly efficient, it can transfer considerable forces and with sufficient length it can use its length of stroke to achieve greater capacity, even at lower pumping frequencies. It enables the embedding of pumps in systems that provide transfer of high pressures, and with the appropriate design, the operational characteristics of equipment can be optimized with great precision.

Source of the general photo: morguefile.com
Source of the figure: W.Rebel, Wikimedia Commons, 2009