Effect of inlet/outlet height difference on P-Q characteristics of an electromagnetic pump for heavy liquid metals

Abstract

A permanent magnet based electromagnetic pump (EMP) has been designed and fabricated for high temperature heavy liquid metals. It has features of being bi-directional in operation and non-intrusive in technique. The EMP has been characterized by generating its pressure developed vs flowrate (P-Q) curve in a high temperature experimental set up. Usually, the pressure developed by the pump is measured by taking the difference of pressure at discharge and suction ends. In contrast our experiment shows that the measured pressure difference between the suction and discharge end is different from that of the actual pressure developed by the pump. This may be due to the existing height difference between the suction and discharge end of the pump. A systematic study has been performed to analyse the effect of gravity on P-Q curve of such pumps. A method has been proposed to accurately generate the P-Q curve for such pumps for heavy liquid metals. The generated P-Q curve has been compared with available analytical expressions and found to match well with Hvasta et al.