API stands for the American Petroleum Institute. API is an organization that creates technical guidelines for natural gas and oil industries. API’s mission is to promote safety across the natural gas and oil industry globally. The American Petroleum Institute currently maintains 700 standards for pumps being manufactured. API 610 and API 685 are two of the pump standards that the API has created.
The API 610 is an extremely strict and common standard for centrifugal pumps. ANSI pumps are pumps that we commonly use to fix client problems. ANSI pumps can be compared to end-suction pumps that are manufactured according to the API 610 standard. API 610 can be applied to many different types of centrifugal pumps and other API 610 compliant machines, such as: overhung (OH) pumps, between bearing (BB) pumps, and vertical suspended (VS) pumps.
API 685 entails the minimum requirements for sealless centrifugal pumps manufactured for the heavy duty petrochemical and gas industry services. API 685 is very similar to API 610, just the sealless pump equivalent. Unlike the various types of pumps that API 610 can be applied to, API 685 is applied to only two different classifications of overhung (OH) pumps: magnetic drive pumps and canned motor pumps. That is considered to be the industry standard for sealless pumps and has been for many years.
If you’d like to learn more about the American Petroleum Institute, API 610 and API 685, or how these standards are used to manufacture the pumps West View Cunningham Pump Solutions uses and offers, please contact us today.