Performance improvement of mixed-flow centrifugal pumps with new impeller shrouds: Numerical and experimental investigations

Hamidreza Bozorgasareh, Javad Khalesi, Mohammad Jafari and Heshmat Olah Gazori

Renewable Energy, 2021, vol. 163, issue C, 635-648

Abstract: A new impeller configuration with innovatively-designed shrouds is introduced, and its impact on the pressure head and efficiency of the semi-open centrifugal pump is explored using experimental and numerical approaches. The proposed design includes attaching specific plates called bladelets to a semi-open impeller to limit the secondary flows over the blades resulting in an increase in the pump head and efficiency. Hydraulic performance of a centrifugal pump with three different bladelets at angles of 30°, 60°, and 90° is investigated experimentally, and the results are compared to semi-open and closed impellers. The values of pressure head and efficiency of the proposed centrifugal pump are determined through numerical analysis and then compared to the experimental data in which an acceptable agreement between the results is observed. Both numerical and experimental results show the proposed impeller design promisingly improves the pressure head and efficiency of semi-open centrifugal pumps. Additionally, the flow analysis demonstrates that the impellers with 90° bladelets enhance the hydraulic performance of a semi-open centrifugal pump nearly to a closed impeller configuration. The loss reduction due to the secondary flow and the eddy generation leads to an improvement in the hydraulic performance of the proposed design.

Keywords: Centrifugal pump; Semi-open/closed impellers; Bladelets; Computational fluid dynamics (CFD); Experimental setup (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2021
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (4)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0960148120313495
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:renene:v:163:y:2021:i:c:p:635-648

DOI: 10.1016/j.renene.2020.08.104

Access Statistics for this article

Renewable Energy is currently edited by Soteris A. Kalogirou and Paul Christodoulides

More articles in Renewable Energy from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().