Numerical study of the influence of changing impeller geometry on improving the performance of a centrifugal pump as turbine

Document Type : Research Article

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School of Mechanical Engineering, Iran University of Science and Technology, Tehran, Iran

Abstract

Implementation of pump as turbine (PAT) rather than traditional turbines in the soft pressure regulation system reduces the initial costs and construction time of the power plant. But the significant losses occur under off-design conditions because the pump was not built to work in reverse mode. In this study, the design and simulation of the centrifugal PAT as the most important part of the power plant have been done by CFturbo and CFX software. The discretization of governing equations was done with the help of the finite volume method, and regarding the turbulent nature of flow in the PAT from k-ω SST model was used. The changing trend of the PAT simulation results is basically in acceptable agreement with the experimental results. The impact of changing the parameters of blade thickness, blade inlet width, and splitter blades was numerically investigated in the operating range. Since increasing the efficiency and production capacity of the power plant is considered, the selection of the optimal mode of changes in the geometrical parameters of the impeller was investigated based on the statistical analysis of the flow rate. The results indicated that by simultaneously modifying the parameters, the operating range with high efficiency and electricity production is increased compared to the original impeller. The optimal impeller is better performing in the range of 0.77QBEP to 1.2QBEP.

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Amirkabir Journal of Mechanical Engineering
Volume 56, Issue 1
April 2024
Pages 5-5

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