Investigation on the gas pockets in a rotodynamic multiphase pump

Abstract

The appearance of gas pockets has an obvious impact on the performance of the rotodynamic multiphase pump. In order to study the formation of gas pockets in the pump and its effects on pump's performance, the unsteady numerical simulation and the visualization experiments were done to investigate gas pockets in a three-stage rotodynamic multiphase pump developed by authors. Meanwhile, the mixture of water and air was selected as the medium. According to the distributions of pressure, gas volume fraction and velocity vector in three compression cells in unsteady flow process, the process of the formation of gas pockets in the pump were analysed generally. The visualization experiments were used to verify the validity of the numerical simulation. The results will be benefit for the hydraulic design of the compression cell of rotodynamic multiphase pump.