Centrifugal pumps are among the most applicable machines in a wide variety of industrial systems for fluid pumping and transportation. Therefore their optimization has always been of great importance. Pump impellers play an important role in these machines as the energy transfer takes place in this part. In the present study, the impeller of a centrifugal pump is optimized by investigating the effect of adding splitter blades and modifying their geometry. A centrifugal pump is experimentally tested and numerically simulated and the characteristic curves are obtained. In the first stage, two different sets of splitter blades with different lengths are added to the impeller and the effect of splitter blade lengths on the results are explored. The case with the highest total head and overall efficiency is selected for the optimization process. The main blade and the splitter blade leading edge position and also the splitter blade distance between two successive blades are selected for the optimization process in the second stage. Efficiency and total head of the pump are considered as the optimization objectives. Using Design of Experiment (DoE) technique, the design space is created and response surface method is utilized to find the optimum geometry. The results show adding splitters can improve total head by about 10.6% and by modifying the geometry using DoE technique it could increase further by 4.4% with the negligible effect on the pump overall efficiency.
In this study, energy harvesting with micro scale hydrodynamic cavitation-thermoelectric generation coupling is investigated. For this, three micro orifices with different geometrical dimensions are fabricated. The hydraulic diameter of the micro orifices are 66.6 μm, 75.2 μm, and 80 μm, while their length is the same (2000μm). Two different working fluids, namely water and Perfluoropentane droplet-water suspension, are utilized for cavitating flows in the fabricated micro orifices. The flow patterns at different upstream pressures are recorded using the high-speed camera system, and the experimental results are analyzed and compared. Thereafter, energy harvesting perspectives of cavitating flows are considered. The released heat from collapsing bubbles and the subsequent temperature rise on the end wall of the microchannel, which can be used as the source for the power generation, is calculated over time. Finally, a miniature energy harvesting system with cavitation system and thermoelectric generator coupling is presented. The maximum power corresponding to two different thermoelectric generators is estimated for with both working fluids and is compared with the required power to run miniature daily used electronics components.
In this study, three microfluidic devices with different geometries are fabricated on silicon and are bonded to glass to withstand high-pressure fluid flows in order to observe bacteria deactivation effects of micro cavitating flows. The general geometry of the devices was a micro orifice with macroscopic wall roughness elements. The width of the microchannel and geometry of the roughness elements were varied in the devices. First, the thermophysical property effect (with deionized water and phosphate-buffered saline (PBS)) on flow behavior was revealed. The results showed a better performance of the device in terms of cavitation generation and intensity with PBS due to its higher density, higher saturation vapor pressure, and lower surface tension in comparison with water. Moreover, the second and third microfluidic devices were tested with water and Salmonella typhimurium bacteria suspension in PBS. Accordingly, the presence of the bacteria intensified cavitating flows. As a result, both devices performed better in terms of the intensity of cavitating flow with the presence of bacteria. Finally, the deactivation performance was assessed. A decrease in the bacteria colonies on the agar plate was detected upon the tenth cycle of cavitating flows, while a complete deactivation was achieved after the fifteenth cycle. Thus, the proposed devices can be considered as reliable hydrodynamic cavitation reactors for “water treatment on chip” applications.
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