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.

Design Method of Controllable Blade Angle and Orthogonal Optimization of Pressure Rise for a Multiphase Pump

“…Because of the importance of rotodynamic multiphase pump in petroleum industry, various studies have been conducted to optimize its structure and improve hydraulic performance. Since the nonlinear relation between geometry parameters and hydraulic performance is complex, various optimization methods have been introduced for the study of multiphase pump, such as genetic algorithm [13][14][15], response surface method [16,17], and the central composite method [18]. Zhang et al [13] developed a multi-objective optimal method by combining the non-dominated sorting genetic algorithm-II (NSGA-II) and artificial neural network (ANN), and the pressure rise and efficiency of optimized pump were improved by 10% and 3%, respectively, in comparison of the original pump.…”

Effect of Thickness Ratio Coefficient on the Mixture Transportation Characteristics of Helical–Axial Multiphase Pumps

“…There are also increasing numbers of researchers focusing on the improvement of multiphase pump performance. In research on the performance improvement of multiphase pumps, one of the most successful is the helical-axial multiphase pump developed by Korean Hanyang University (Seoul, South Korea), which uses Latin hypercube technology [22,23] to optimize variables by sampling the best parameters from multiple variables to optimize the parameters to achieve high pump efficiency. Li et al [24] used the orthogonal experimental method to optimize a multiphase pump to improve its efficiency; the optimization result showed that the relative head and efficiency increased.…”

Multi-objective optimization of a high efficiency and suction performance for mixed-flow pump impeller

“…This research aimed to provide a guideline for systematically maximizing hydraulic efficiency and suction specific speed for mixed-flow pump using a commercial CFD packages and optimization tool. Prior to performing the study, the numerical optimization and cavitation of previous works were investigated (Choi et al, 2016;Suh et al, 2018;Suh, Kim, Choi, Joo, & Lee, 2017). First, mixed-flow pump was initially designed according to the traditional design method, and then the both impeller and diffuser were redesigned by focusing on the hydraulic efficiency.…”