Title: Optimal designs of an ESP to handle upto 10% GVF

Authors: Rohit Sudhakar Adhav; Abdus Samad; Frank Kenyery

Addresses: Department of Ocean Engineering, Indian Institute of Technology Madras, Chennai 600036, India ' Department of Ocean Engineering, Indian Institute of Technology Madras, Chennai 600036, India ' Universidad simon Bolivar, aboratorio de Conversión de, Energía Mecánica, Valle de Sartenejas, Venezuela

Abstract: The present work aims at improving the performance of an electrical submersible pump (ESP) in multi-phase flow (MPHF) scenario. A single-stage ESP was designed and the MPHF was simulated considering maximum 10% gas volume fraction (GVF) by a CFD solver. A non-homogeneous MPHF model along with K-ε turbulence model was used to solve air-water two-phase flows. The reference geometry of the pump was altered by varying pump impeller inlet and exit angles to maximise the efficiency and the head, which were the objectives of the present problem. The CFD solver evaluated several designs and weighted-average surrogates were constructed. Populations for a multi-objective genetic algorithm were generated from the surrogates and Pareto optimal fronts were obtained. It was found that the gas bubbles get separated on pressure surface of the impeller. The conflicting objectives produce different designs which can help the pump designers to find better designs for the different GVFs. [Received: October 14, 2014; Accepted: July 27, 2015]

Keywords: multi-phase flow; MPHF; genetic algorithms; surrogate models; Pareto optimal front; PoF; multi-objective optimisation; electric submersible pumps; ESP; optimal design; pump design; GVF; gas volume fraction; turbulence modelling; impeller inlet angle; impeller exit angle; CFD; computational fluid dynamics; gas bubbles; pressure surface.

DOI: 10.1504/IJOGCT.2016.080094

International Journal of Oil, Gas and Coal Technology, 2016 Vol.13 No.4, pp.338 - 358

Received: 26 Oct 2014
Accepted: 27 Jul 2015
Published online: 02 Nov 2016 *

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