Centrifugal pumps are extensively used in the oil and gas industries and the pump performance drops with higher viscosity and higher surface roughness of the pump impeller, and the impeller design parameters have significant effect on the pump performance. Through the present research, crude oil pumping behavior has been predicted, analyzed and compared with other fluids. A 3D flow simulation using Reynolds-averaged Navier–Stokes (RANS) equation was performed by considering different blade angles and impeller surface roughness to pump crude oil, kerosene, gasoline, saline-water and water. Standard k-ε two-equation turbulence model was used for the turbulent closure of steady incompressible flow. The investigation shows that the blade angles have significant influence on the head, input power and efficiency of the impeller for different liquids. Higher head and power, and lower hydraulic efficiency were observed with higher surface roughness values. © 2015, The Author(s).

Abdus Samad

Department of Ocean Engineering

Sayed Ahmed Imran Bellary

Centrifugation

Crude oil

efficiency

Impellers

Incompressible flow

Kerosene

Navier Stokes equations

Pumps

SALINE WATER

Turbomachine blades

Turbulence models

Viscosity

3D FLOW SIMULATION

BLADE ANGLE

CENTRIFUGAL IMPELLER

Hydraulic efficiency

Oil and gas industry

SLIP FACTOR

STEADY INCOMPRESSIBLE FLOWS

Two-equation turbulence models

Surface roughness

Fulltext

IIT Madras is a public technical and research university located in Chennai, Tamil Nadu. Founded in 1959, it is recognised as an Institute of National Importance.

IIT Madras has been ranked as the top engineering institute in India for four years in a row by the National Institutional Ranking Framework of the MHRD

It currently offers undergraduate, postgraduate and research degrees across 16 disciplines in Engineering, Sciences, Humanities and Management. About 596 faculty belonging to science and engineering departments and centres of the Institute are engaged in teaching, research and industrial consultancy.

IIT Madras

Journal of Petroleum Exploration and Production Technology

Low fidelity model assisted design optimization of turbomachines has reduced the total computational and experimental costs. These models are called surrogate models which mimic the actual experiments or simulations. The surrogate models can generate thousands of approximate results from a few samples, making it easy to locate the optimal solution. Ample articles reported surrogate assisted design optimization of centrifugal pumps. In this article, the authors try to give a brief overview of the surrogate based optimization technique along with its historical applications and trend of the recent use. The various key design parameters which affect the performance of the centrifugal pump have also been discussed. The effectiveness of the surrogate based optimization technique and corresponding performance metrics have been discussed. © 2018 M. Hamid Siddique et al.

Mathematical Problems in Engineering

Design Optimization of the Centrifugal Pumps via Low Fidelity Models

An electric submersible pump that lifts crude oil from well bore is a type of multi-stage centrifugal pump. The unexpected wellbore conditions like change in pumping fluid viscosity and sand production severely affect pump performance and eventually lead to breakdown. The present study proposes a numerical approach to understand the effects of fluid viscosity and surface roughness of the flow passages in an electric submersible pump at design and off-design conditions. A three-dimensional numerical analysis was carried out by solving Reynolds-averaged Navier-Stokes equations with shear stress transport turbulence model to characterize performance of the pump. The pumping fluids, i.e., water and crude oils of different viscosities were analyzed for different surface roughness (Ks) values. The model predictions were compared with a theoretical one-dimensional model for the effect of viscosity and surface roughness. It was found that the disc-friction and the skin-friction losses are sensitive hydraulic losses of which the disc-friction loss increases with increase in viscosity, whereas skin-friction loss decreases with increase in surface roughness at high viscosity. The combined effect of viscosity and roughness showed a complicated behavior and eventually an improvement in pump performance at a higher surface roughness compared to a smoother and lowers surface roughness. © Institution of Mechanical Engineers.

Proceedings of the Institution of Mechanical Engineers, Part A: Journal of Power and Energy

Combined effects of viscosity and surface roughness on electric submersible pump performance

In the oil and gas industry, crude oil is frequently transported and centrifugal pumps are used extensively. The pump impeller works under both design and off-design conditions in the applications, and the flow pattern deviates from the ideal case because of viscosity and density changes. An experimental as well as a numerical study was conducted to study the performance of a pump delivering water and light crude oil under design and off-design conditions. A 3D steady incompressible flow in the centrifugal pump was simulated by solving the Reynolds-averaged Navier–Stokes equations and SST turbulence model. At a low flow rate, extensive reverse flow occurs at the inlet of the impeller in the case of water, whereas the opposite was found for light crude oil. Recirculation was observed in the impeller flow passage for both water and the crude oil, but this diminished at higher flow rates. © 2017, King Fahd University of Petroleum &amp; Minerals.

Arabian Journal for Science and Engineering

Experimental and Numerical Investigation of the Performance of a Centrifugal Pump When Pumping Water and Light Crude Oil

Generally, artificial lifts to pump crude oil having a high viscosity from wellbores using an electrical submersible pump (ESP) are not efficient. The present study consists of a numerical approach to understand the effect of fluid viscosity and surface roughness of the flow passage on the performance of an ESP. A three-dimensional numerical analysis was carried out using Reynolds-averaged Navier-Stokes equations at different off-design conditions. The standard k-ϵ turbulence model was used for the steady incompressible flow. Water and crude oils having different viscosities were used as working fluids and numerical analyses were made by varying surface roughness of the flow passage. Although there was a sharp drop in the efficiency with the increase in surface roughness, but the combined effect of viscosity and surface roughness showed an increase in efficiency up to a certain fluid viscosity. © Copyright 2016 by ASME.

American Society of Mechanical Engineers, Fluids Engineering Division (Publication) FEDSM

Numerical analysis of fluid flow through an electrical submersible pump for handling viscous liquid

A major concern regarding surrogate model-based design optimisation is the modelling fidelity of the approximation functions. This issue is efficaciously addressed by utilising multiple surrogates based on the same data to offer approximations from alternative modelling perspective. The approach is introduced to optimise performance of a centrifugal impeller as a case study. The basic surrogate models adopted here include response surface approximation, radial basis neural network, Kriging, support vector machine and Shepard method. A weighted average and a new weighted average surrogate models were constructed from the basic surrogates and implemented in the present problem. A hybrid genetic algorithm was used to explore the optimal points. Design variables from the impeller inlet and exit blade angles were selected and design of experiments were used to select the sample points from the design space. The aim of the optimisation was to maximise hydraulic efficiency and head generated. The optimised centrifugal impeller yielded lower losses by altering the vane angles. It was found that the most accurate surrogate did not always lead to the best design. This manifested that using multiple surrogates can improve the robustness of the optimisation at a minimal computational cost. Copyright © 2017 Inderscience Enterprises Ltd.

International Journal of Computer Aided Engineering and Technology

An alternative approach to surrogate averaging for a centrifugal impeller shape optimisation

The major issue of multiple fidelity based analysis and optimization of fluid machinery system depends upon the proper construction of low fidelity model or meta-model. A low fidelity model uses responses obtained from a high fidelity model, and the meta-model is then used to produce population of solutions required for evolutionary algorithm for multi-objective optimization. The Pareto-optimal front which shows functional relationships among the multiple objectives can produce erroneous results if the low fidelity models are not well-constructed. In the present research, response surface approximation and Kriging meta-models were evaluated for their effectiveness for the application in the turbomachinery design and optimization. A high fidelity model such as CFD technique along with the meta-models was used to obtain Pareto-optimal front via multi-objective genetic algorithm. A centrifugal impeller has been considered as case study to find relationship between two conflicting objectives, viz., hydraulic efficiency and head. Design variables from the impeller geometry have been chosen and the responses of the objective functions were evaluated through CFD analysis. The fidelity of each meta-model has been discussed in context of their predictions in entire design space in general and near optimal region in particular. Exploitation of the multiple meta-models enhances the quality of multi-objective optimization and provides the information pertaining to fidelity of optimization model. It was observed that the Kriging meta-model was better suited for this type of problem as it involved less approximation error in the Pareto-optimal front. © 2014, The Korean Society of Mechanical Engineers and Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg.

Journal of Mechanical Science and Technology

Effectiveness of meta-models for multi-objective optimization of centrifugal impeller

Journal of Engineering Studies and Research

THE INFLUENCE OF THE INLET ANGLE OVER THE RADIAL IMPELLER GEOMETRY DESIGN APPROACH WITH ANSYS

Computers & Fluids

Numerical study of the effects of some geometric characteristics of a centrifugal pump impeller that pumps a viscous fluid

Journal of Applied Fluid Mechanics

Blade Exit Angle Effects on Performance of a Standard Industrial Centrifugal Oil Pump

Pumping crude oil by centrifugal impeller having different blade angles and surface roughness

Journal	Data powered by TypesetJournal of Petroleum Exploration and Production Technology
Publisher	Data powered by TypesetSpringer Verlag
Open Access	No