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A Numerical Study on the Performance of 2 Stage Mixed Flow Pump for Seawater Lifting

Young-Ju Kim, Nam-Sub Woo, Jae-Ki Kwon, So-Keul Chung, Eui-Seob Park, and Chi-Ho YoonMineral Resources Research Division, Korea Institute of Geoscience and Mineral Resources

Daejeon, Korea

ABSTRACT

The seawater lift pump system is responsible for maintaining the open

canal level to provide the suction flow of circulating water pump at the

set point. The objective of this paper is to design a 2-stage mixed flowpump (for seawater lifting) by inverse design method and to evaluate

the overall performance and the local flow fields of the pump by using

a commercial CFD code. Rotating speed of the impeller is 1,750 rpm

with the flow rate of 2,700 m3/h. Finite volume method with structured

mesh and Realizable k- turbulent model is used to guaranty moreaccurate prediction of turbulent flow in the pump impeller. The

numerical results such as static head, brake horse power and efficiency

of the mixed flow pump are compared with the reference data. The

calculated results are good agreement with the reference data less 3%

error.

KEY WORDS: Seawater lift pump, Mixed flow pump, FPSO, Totalhead, Pump efficiency, Inverse design method

INTRODUCTION

During the last 15 years there has been a rapid growth in the

development of deepwater oil and gas fields in Gulf of Mexico, Brazil

and West-Africa. So, the growth of floating production systems has led

a corresponding growth in the related equipments market. Seawater liftpump and package is the one of the main equipment of the marine

plants.

On the other hand, marine plant industry has emerged as the next

growth engine as an alternative market of the shipbuilding industry in

Korea.But the most marine plant equipment have exclusive by the advanced

foreign companies. The technologies and market of seawater lift pump

also have been preempted by the advanced foreign companies.

Because of their flexibility and long-term reliability, mixed-flow

pumps are widely used for applications requiring high delivery rates

against moderate heads.The main demand in all parts of the world is from the power

generating sector, where mixed flow pumps are used in the cooling

circuits to condense the expanded steam from the turbines. Because

they require high reliability according to long-term use, high quality of

design and production technology is essential in order to enter themarket. Seawater lift pumps in the field of marine plants are required

excellent performance and durability.

As shown in Fig. 1, seawater lift pumps can be classified into 4 types.

Horizontal Vertical

Line shaft Submerged

Fig. 1 Classification of seawater lift pump

South Korea is a world-class shipbuilding industry, however marine

plant equipment industry has been relatively underdeveloped. Therefore,

recently many research and development projects for marine plant and

equipments in progress.Hwang et al. carried out the hydraulic design optimization and

performance analysis of mixed flow pumps for water-jet marine vehicle

propulsion using mean streamline analysis and 3D CFD code.

Choi et al. have investigated the viscous flow field within the

impeller of a centrifugal pump in order to determine the influence ofthe parameters such as the numerical schemes, the turbulence models

765

Proceedings of the Twenty-first (2011) International Offshore and Polar Engineering ConferenceMaui, Hawaii, USA, June 19-24, 2011

Copyright 2011 by the International Society of Offshore and Polar Engineers (ISOPE)ISBN 978-1-880653-96-8 (Set); ISSN 1098-6189 (Set); www.isope.org