Design of a centrifugal pump for efficiency optimization

A centrifugal pump is a rotodynamic pump using a rotating impeller to maximize the fluid pressure. A typical company in South Africa using Centrifugal Pumps to supply water is the Rand Water and its pumping stations. They pump about 4.7 billion liters of drinking water from their booster stations per day through centrifugal pumps. The pump-set has two stages connected in series and is designed to deliver 200 megaliters per day (ML/day) at a generated head of 197 meters of water. In the course of the years, the pump's hydraulic output has dropped to a point where more energy is expended to provide the required head and flowrate. The reduction in centrifugal pump output causes increased energy consumption. The high consumption of energy is a direct result of the centrifugal pump not operating as required by the standards. In this project a new centrifugal pump for Rand Water is designed that to be more efficient in its water pumping performance as compared to existing designs. Three concepts were selected for evaluation in order to choose best two concepts. Appropriate calculations were done to obtain the desired dimensions in order to improve the performance of the pump.