Use of 3D Simulation Methods to Increase the Efficiency of Single- and Double-Bladed Pumps and for Energy-Efficient Transport of Solid-Laden Fluids

Project duration: 2017 - 2021
Financing: Bundesministerium für Wirtschaft und Energie (BMWi)

For the transportation of solid-laden fluids such as wastewater or sludge, pumps with only a few blades (e.g., 1 or 2) are used to avoid clogging of the pump hydraulics. While these units are designed with a priority on high operational availability, simultaneously improving their energy efficiency is currently not feasible due to a lack of suitable methods. Therefore, this project aims to further develop 3D CAE methods for numerical flow and vibration studies based on OpenFOAM. These methods will be experimentally validated and made generally applicable for single- and double-bladed pumps. The results will provide an improved understanding of the interactions between pump design, operational behavior, and clogging tendency, opening up the possibility of systematically increasing efficiency while maintaining low clogging susceptibility.

A combined numerical-experimental approach will be pursued in this project. A crucial step towards fully exploiting the presumed efficiency potential in single- and double-bladed pumps is to increase the accuracy of available CFD methods. A significant factor is assumed to be the specification of realistic transient boundary conditions for the numerical model, due to the strong temporal fluctuations of flow parameters. These conditions will be derived in the first step from time-resolved measurements of pressure and, if applicable, flow rate pulsations of a test pump. In the second step, the coupled simulation of the pump with the entire system is planned, eliminating the need for inflow and outflow boundaries in the model and thus the necessity for measuring boundary conditions. Further focus will be on testing scale-adaptive turbulence models in addition to evaluating conventional statistical models.

Contact: Romuald Skoda