Application of Proportional Pressure Control in Centrifugal Pumps

Abstract

Centrifugal pumps are the core pressure boosting unit of urban water supply systems. With the proposal of the dual carbon strategy, there is an urgent need to reduce the energy consumption of centrifugal pumps in water supply systems. Therefore, we use a control method based on the line of proportional pressure, which effectively reduces the head of centrifugal pumps under low flow conditions and achieves a high energy saving of the system. Moreover, we set up a water supply testing system, and apply two control methods, including the constant pressure method and the proportional pressure control method, to regulate the pump and valve. After that, we compared and analysed the comprehensive energy consumption of the system under different control strategies. The results illustrate that proportional pressure control can save more than 58% energy in theory at flow of 1.3 m3/h, and the system controllable flow range is up of 1.3 m3/h. The proportional pressure control has wider high efficiency working flow range than the constant pressure control, it can achieve a higher pump efficiency at minimum flow of 2.5 m3/h, while the constant pressure control is at minimum flow of 3.4 m3/h.