Abstract
This paper describes a quantitative evaluation of annular linear induction pump efficiency. The evaluation was carried out through an experiment and a numerical analysis. Comparing the experimental data and the numerical result of the pump efficiency, their tendencies are in agreement, but the discrepancy becomes conspicuous with increase of two non-dimensional numbers, the magnetic Reynolds number and the interaction parameter. The discrepancy is probably due to some azimuthal non-uniformity of the magnetic field and of the sodium velocity. In fact, the experimental data reveals that the magnetic field and the sodium velocity are azimuthally non-uniform and their non-uniformity increases with increase of the magnetic Reynolds number and the interaction parameter. In addition, the numerical result indicates that a non-uniform magnetic field and sodium velocity bring about a decrease of the developed pressure and an increase of the power factor, which results in the decrease of the pump efficiency. These experimental data and numerical result suggest that high-efficiency large-scale electromagnetic pumps may be realized by optimizing the pump specifications such as the supply frequency and the pole pitch so that the magnetic Reynolds number and the interaction parameter should be as small as possible but close to the critical ones.
