Pumps and Compressors by Marc Borremans

When I studied electro-mechanical engineering at the University of Brussels, my professor of applied mechanics explained how turbopumps and turbines work. He proved the equation of Euler: he drew two curved lines on the blackboard (yeah, that was 1970) and proved Euler’s law, a proof of one page. Then he said, “This law applies to all pumps and turbines.” That was it. I wondered, “What do I know about a pump or turbine?” I had no answer. 

It was only when I became a professor and had to teach

courses like “Pumps and compressors” and “Steam and gas turbines” and started to read magazines, brochures, and books on the subject that I saw what those devices looked like without a casing and how they worked. I also think that a beautiful or detailed picture can explain much more than text alone or dry formulas. That opinion informs this book. There are more than 700 drawings and pictures in this book. I hope you like them!

I worked a lot as a professor. I started in 1973 giving courses in electricity, electrotechnics, electronics, and high-frequency techniques for four years. Then I became a professor in mechanics, giving courses in thermodynamics, applied thermodynamics (pumps and compressors, combustion engines, steam and gas turbines, refrigeration techniques, heat techniques), materials science, fluid mechanics, strength of materials, pneumatics and hydraulics, CAD2D, CAD3D, CNC, CAM, and so. 

For these subjects, I designed detailed courses, first on the typewriter (do you know what that is?) and then, from 1983, on the computer. My first computer had an 8-bit processor with 16 kB of RAM and the printer was a matrix printer. In total I offered 45 subjects. When I ended my career, my courses comprised 2857 

pages per year.

When I retired in 2007, I started collecting information for this book, beginning with my own course, and spent a year constantly writing on and researching the subject. I wrote in my mother tongue: Dutch. In 2007, a search for “pumps” on Google elicited no fewer than 94 million references. The word “compressor” had a hit rate of 18 million. This is because both devices account for a significant part of the infrastructure of buildings, houses, and factories. It is reckoned that in a petrochemical plant there is one pump installed for every employee. 

With this knowledge and 35 years’ teaching experience, I started to draw up my own sort of encyclopedia. I collected as much information as possible from the literature, company brochures, and the Internet in order to catalogue as many of the pumps and compressors on the market as possible, writing a description of them, including their properties. It is left to the reader to find out which pump or compressor is the best for a certain job. That choice will not be distilled immediately from the book. The choice of a pump or compressor is not an exact science; it is an assessment of the pros and cons before a definitive choice can be made. Reasons for choosing a pump for a specific jobare based on price, maintenance, lifecycle, regulation, type of fluid, etc.