Strive to Reduce Slurry Erosion and Cavitation in Pumps Through Flow Modifications, Design Optimization and Some Other Techniques: Long Term Impact on Process Industry

Adnan Aslam Noon; Absaar Ul Jabbar; Hasan Koten; Man-Hoe Kim; Hafiz Waqar Ahmed; Umair Mueed; Ahmad Adnan Shoukat; Bilal Anwar

doi:10.3390/ma14030521

Strive to Reduce Slurry Erosion and Cavitation in Pumps Through Flow Modifications, Design Optimization and Some Other Techniques: Long Term Impact on Process Industry

Materials (Basel). 2021 Jan 21;14(3):521. doi: 10.3390/ma14030521.

Authors

Adnan Aslam Noon¹, Absaar Ul Jabbar², Hasan Koten³, Man-Hoe Kim⁴, Hafiz Waqar Ahmed⁵, Umair Mueed⁶, Ahmad Adnan Shoukat⁷, Bilal Anwar¹

Affiliations

¹ Department of Mechanical Engineering, FET. International Islamic University, Islamabad 44000, Pakistan.
² Research Centre for Modelling and Simulation, National University of Sciences and Technology (NUST), Islamabad 44000, Pakistan.
³ Department of Mechanical Engineering, Istanbul Medeniyet University, İstanbul 34700, Turkey.
⁴ School of Mechanical Engineering & IEDT, Kyungpook National University, Daegu 41566, Korea.
⁵ Department of Mechanical Engineering, Sungkyunkwan University, Natural Sciences Campus: (16419), Seobu-ro, Jangan-gu, Suwon-si, Gyeonggi-do 2066, Korea.
⁶ Department of Mechanical Engineering, University of Engineering and Technology, Taxila 47050, Pakistan.
⁷ Department of Mechanical Engineering, Institute of Space Technology, Islamabad 44000, Pakistan.

Abstract

Centrifugal pumps are being widely used in various industries for moving fluids that carry solids through pipelines where the need of head and flow rate is not high. Slurry erosion and cavitation are an extremely complex and not yet fully understood phenomenon that occur in centrifugal pumps; however, these undesirable phenomena can be reduced to a certain extent. Appropriate design and development of experiments is required to reasonably predict slurry erosion and cavitation. However, CFD methodology complements analytical solutions and experiments whenever testing of equipment has limitations. The current paper highlights the various slurry erosion and cavitation reduction techniques utilized by different researchers. Economic analysis conducted for a case study relevant to centrifugal pump (CP) usage in Pakistan shows that an 8% enhancement in pump efficiency can reduce the life cycle cost to about 17.6%, which could save up to USD 4281 for a single pump annually in Pakistan.

Keywords: CFD; cavitation; centrifugal pump; erosion; process industry.

Publication types

Review