Vacuum generation

More and more techniques are being used to produce products and materials using "vacuum". These techniques (such as vacuum distillation or the manufacture of television tubes), which came out of the laboratories a long time ago, use low pressures (a more accurate term than vacuum, which still causes difficulties of understanding between users and manufacturers), as the range covers thirteen decades of the atmosphere (10 ³ hPa to 10 ^-10 hPa). As in all industrial fields, the race for production efficiency has led to increasingly specific vacuum pump requirements. The volumes to be pumped, the pressures to be obtained for processes to run smoothly, and the pump flow rates required to keep installations running smoothly have led manufacturers to improve existing pumps and design new ones. Environmental (discharge) and product quality (pollution) issues have also necessitated the creation of new machines, which have had to take into account the energy efficiency still marginalized in laboratory research, as well as maintenance, safety and security issues. The very wide variety of applications among the many users generates a spirit and a "vacuum" culture that suppliers sometimes find hard to grasp. As a result, every pumping system has to be customized, and the pumps to be used selected with care. The concepts of clean vacuum and so-called dry pumping still require a great deal of explanation to users. It is impossible to list here the multitude of applications and their solutions. What's more, the gains achieved by new technologies are not always economically quantifiable in a theoretical study.