A study on numerical optimization and performance verification of multiphase pump for offshore plant

Abstract

Multiphase pumps are core equipment for offshore plant industry. They are utilized in diverse areas. According to a report about the tendency of multiphase pumps for offshore plant, a helico-axial pump is the most preferred. A helico-axial pump with advanced technologies is widely known to have large handling capacity and operability even at high GVF ranges. However, its disadvantage is that its mechanical efficiency is lower than other multiphase pumps. Because of this, a numerical optimization was performed in this study to enhance the hydraulic performance of multiphase pumps. Before numerical optimization, reliability verification of numerical analysis for single-phase and multiphase flow was carried out. To perform a single objective optimization for high efficiency, design variables and ranges were selected. The single objective optimization was conducted for both impeller and diffuser. The objective function was evaluated at design points using Latin-hypercube sampling, one experiment technique, in design ranges. The performance of the experiment sets was evaluated using advanced computational fluid dynamics. After that, the response surface of a second-order polynomial function which was produced based on the performance evaluation results was used to find the optimal point. The results showed remarkable increases in a higher performance level than the base model. The reason for performance improvement was analyzed through comparison of the internal flow field. Additionally, numerical results were compared to results of performance evaluation through experiment.

Keywords

Helico-axial pump gas volume fraction multiphase numerical analysis numerical optimization Latin-hypercube sampling response surface approximation surrogate model experiment performance verification

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