Performance Enhancement of a Centrifugal Pump by Impeller Retrofitting

Abstract

Centrifugal pumps are widely used in different industries, therefore there are numerous researches studying the methods to enhance the performance of the pumps. This paper studies the effect of two design parameters of impeller, namely variable blade inlet angle and winglets, to the efficiency of the pump. Variable blade inlet angle might decrease the impact of the shock losses at off-design conditions, while adding the winglets could reduce the recirculation losses caused by the flow transferred from pressure side to suction side due to the pressure difference. CAD models for the base case and two proposed cases were designed for the future experiments. Preliminary experiment for the impeller with winglets has demonstrated the increase in efficiency. Lastly, by varying inlet angle and size of the winglets for two parameters, the optimized configuration would be determined experimentally.