Three-dimensional simulations of liquid/gas flow through radial centrifugal pumps and the effect of bubble coalescence and breakup on the formation of gas accumulations

Abstract

Three-dimensional liquid/gas flow mixture simulations of a centrifugal pump are performed by a hybrid two-phase solver, which comprises a blending between a Volume-of-Fluid-like interface-sharpening scheme and a classical homogeneous mixture two-fluid model. The hybrid solver is combined with a population balance model and a turbulence-scale adaptive simulation approach. The experimentally measured head drop due to adherent gas pockets at elevated gas loadings is well reproduced. By a thorough validation with optical measurement data, it is shown that the transition from dispersed bubbles to coherent gas accumulations as well as the steady core of gas pockets and their unsteady wake could be captured without any parameter fitting of coalescence and breakup kernels. Regions of high coalescence activity correlate with locations of gas accumulations, stabilizing the gas pockets in the impeller region. Bubble breakup, in contrast, was primarily found in the wake of the accumulation zones where the tip leakage flow of the semi-open impeller re-enters the blade passage. The particular hybrid solver architecture, together with the resolution of turbulence scales and bubble populations, facilitates the reproduction of bubble coalescence and breakup effects on the formation of gas pockets in centrifugal pumps.