The chain pump, a water pump used for centuries, consists of a pipe, circular chain, and flat plates. The plates catch water and are drawn through the tube. The pump was first used in ancient Egypt and Babylonia and was later improved with a flywheel. Motorized chain pumps were rare and used in places with little infrastructure or on ships. Variations included the bucket system and a large square pallet used in China.
A chain pump is a type of water pump that has been around for centuries but has fallen out of use in the modern age. The pump consists of a pipe connected to the water supply, a circular chain and flat plates of the same size and shape as the pipe. These plates are connected to the chain, which is then drawn through the tube. The water is caught on the pan and brought to the surface. The chain is circular, so when the plates rise on one side of the chain, they fall back into the water on the other.
The use of the chain pump was first recorded in ancient Egypt and Babylonia. These early pumps were nearly identical to those used thousands of years later. The original chain pumps used animal or human energy to spin the chain, often through a secondary system such as a push wheel. When the wheel turns, it activates an associated crank, which drives the chain. These early wheel systems rarely provided mechanical benefits, but they did make the process easier for the workers.
The first major innovation in the system came around the turn of the second millennium when Islamic scholars added a flywheel to the system. This addition smoothed out the movement of the chain and provided little mechanical advantage to the system. A mechanical advantage allows a system to produce more power than it absorbs, meaning that less work was spent carrying the same amount of water.
Hundreds of years later, the pump was motorised. This type of chain pump was very rare, as other pump styles had taken its place. It was more common in places with little infrastructure or within the bilge of ships. In both cases, its popularity was due to the relative simplicity of the system coupled with its low power consumption.
While most chain pumps used the tube and pan method, there were a handful of variations. The most common alteration was the bucket system. The chains of these pumps held buckets instead of the standard plates. The water rose and a worker manually emptied the bucket. This style of chain pump typically had no hose at all, just an open well.
In China, a large square pallet was used as a dish. These systems would bring in huge amounts of water, which would generally flow into irrigation ditches. The Chinese also used a modified chain pump to fill cisterns high up on the cliff sides. These pumps worked similar to a bucket pump, but generally drew from an active water source such as a lake or river rather than an underground source.
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