Air-Water Two-Phase Flow Performance of Centrifugal Pump Impellers with Various Blade Angles

Abstract

Air/water two-phase flow performance of a centrifugal pump was investigated for five kinds of closed impellers, each of which has a different outlet or inlet blade angle. The results showed that (1) sudden pump head degradation due to gas accumulation in the impeller occurs at a lower air flow rate with increasing inlet or outlet blade angle of the impeller; (2) the pump head remains high even under the condition of gas accumulation when the impeller has large blade outlet angle. These results are qualitatively discussed including numerical calculations of one-dimensional two-phase flow.