Operation
The cheap and simple water aspirator is the most common type of aspirator. It is used in chemistry and biology laboratories and consists of a tee fitting which is attached to a tap and has a hose barb at one side. The flow of water passes through the straight portion of the tee, which has a restriction at the intersection, where the hose barb is attached. The vacuum hose should be connected to this barb.
If a liquid is used as the working fluid, the strength of the vacuum produced is limited by the vapor pressure of the liquid (for water, 3.2 kPa or 0.46 psi or 32 mbar at 25 °C or 77 °F). If a gas is used, however, this restriction does not exist. The industrial steam ejector (also called the 'steam jet ejector', 'steam aspirator', or 'steam jet aspirator') uses steam as a working fluid.
In order to avoid using too much steam, a single steam ejector stage is generally not used to generate vacuum below approximately 10 kPa (75 mmHg). To generate higher vacuum, multiple stages are used; in a two-stage steam ejector, for example, the second stage provides vacuum for the waste steam output by the first stage. Condensers may be used between stages to reduce the load on the later stages. Steam ejectors with two, three, four, five and six stages may be used to produce vacuums down to 2.5 kPa, 300 Pa, 40 Pa, 4 Pa, and 0.4 Pa, respectively.
The air ejector or venturi pump is similar to the steam ejector but uses high-pressure air as the working fluid. Multistage air ejectors can be used, but since air cannot easily be condensed at room temperature, an air ejector is usually limited to two or three stages.
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