Optimal design and performance improvement of an electric submersible pump impeller based on Taguchi approach

Abstract

Electric submersible pump (ESP) is the core artificial lift equipment to pump production oil from underground or deep sea to the surface. Its energy efficiency significantly affects global oil market and energy consumption. To explore the effects of the impeller meridian profile on the hydraulic performance, a typical multi-stage ESP with medium specific speed was taken as the research object. Based on the statically determinate control of the shroud and hub profiles, eight parameters of the impeller meridian profile were selected as the key factors. By taking head and efficiency as optimization targets, 27 schemes were designed according to the Taguchi approach. The effect analysis method was employed to determine the primary and secondary order of the parameters. The linear relationship between the meridional parameters and the optimization target was analyzed based on regression analysis. The results show that the design of the intersection line of the front and rear shrouds in the impeller meridian has great effects on the ESP performance. The optimal model shows a significant improvement on both of efficiency and head compared with the original model. The head increases 3.5% and the efficiency increases 6.1%. This study provides new inspiration to optimize the hydraulic design of ESPs to achieve higher efficiency and lower energy consuming.