PERFORMANCE ENHANCEMENT OF AN ELECTRIC SUBMERSIBLE PUMP

A numerical analysis and optimization has been done for a single stage electric submersible pump (ESP) which is basically a centrifugal pump to retrofit into wellbore in groundwater pumping or oil pumping. The pump is designed and simulated using a commercial code. The objective was to improve the pump performance if the inlet and outlet angles of impeller and diffuser are modified. Hence, the variables were the blade angles and 15 different designs were produced via Latin hyper cube sampling within the variable ranges. The designs were evaluated to find the hydraulic efficiency or the objective function value using a Reynolds average Navier Stokes equation solver. Two surrogates were constructed from the CFD results and the optimal points were predicted. The optimal designs were again evaluated using CFD solver and further analyses were made. It was found that the efficiency was increased by 4.23%.