Special Issue Article

Advances in Mechanical Engineering

2017, Vol. 9(3) 1–13
Ó The Author(s) 2017
Study on performance characteristic of DOI: 10.1177/1687814017691892
journals.sagepub.com/home/ade
medium consistency pump

Daoxing Ye1 and Hong Li2

Abstract
The aim of this work is to study the operation and performance characteristics of medium consistency pump in different
conditions, and a sonar flowmeter and monitoring system are used in the experimental set up. The head, efficiency, gas
fraction, and max flow rate were studied under different pulp concentrations 7.52%, 9.3%, and 12.1%; at speeds 960,
1140, and 1500 r/min; and degas vacuum degree. The dimensionless analysis is applied to pulp pumping. The experimen-
tal results show that pump head and efficiency decrease with the increase in the pulp concentration at constant flow
rate. Vacuum degree has significant effect on pump performance. Medium consistency pump can pump pulp concentra-
tion at 7.52% without vacuum, but pump head and efficiency decrease obviously with the increase in the flow rate. With
increase in vacuum degree, pump head increases and gas fraction decreases at pump outlet. Head increases with the
increase in rotation speed. The higher rotation speed leads to the lower vacuum degree, which indicates that enhancing
speed improves gas–liquid separation. With the increase in concentration of the gas fraction, the degas vacuum degree
increases. The max flow rate decreases with the increase in concentration and increases with the increase in rotation
speed.

Keywords
Medium consistency pump, performance, consistency, sonar flowmeter, vacuum pressure, gas fraction

Date received: 1 August 2016; accepted: 9 January 2017

Academic Editor: Ramoshweu Lebelo

Introduction of a centrifugal pump is studied by Murakami and

The papermaking industry used more low consistency
centrifugal pump to transport low concentration pulp
suspension (\7%) at present. Medium consistency
(MC) technology was first developed in the Northern
Europe in 1970s, and MC pump was one of the impor-
tant equipments to pump the pulp slurries at 7%–20%
mass concentration (Cm), which is useful to greatly
reduce the number of pulp pump, simplify the entire
pulping process, and reduce water consumption and
wastewater discharge.1 MC pump is becoming popular
with papermaking process.
MC pulp suspension is a gas–liquid–solid three-
phase non-Newtonian fluid and the physical character-
istics are very complex2,3. It is hard to use the numerical
calculation method for predicting MC pump perfor-
mance. The effect of import bubble on the performance
Minemura,4 and it was found that the increase in gas
will lead to decrease in the head. Gullichsen and
Harkonen5 and Kamyr in 1981 studied that one and
split two structures of consistency pulp pump were
experimentally tested to study the transport properties
of the pulp density of 12% and water pump; the results
1
Key Laboratory of Fluid and Power Machinery, Ministry of Education,
School of Energy and Power Engineering, Xihua University, Chengdu,
China
2
China National Research Center of Pumps, Jiangsu University, Zhenjiang,
China
Corresponding author:
Daoxing Ye, Key Laboratory of Fluid and Power Machinery, Ministry of
Education, School of Energy and Power Engineering, Xihua University,
Chengdu 610039, China.
Email: dxingye@163.com

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2 Advances in Mechanical Engineering
showed that the accumulation of gas in the pump flow
caused by a large performance is the reason for the
decline. Pressure difference of pump suction hole and
pulp pump is the main reason impacting gas–liquid
separation, and the relationship between gas volume at
pump inlet and gas–liquid separation is not obvious.
The flow models at different flow conditions were
investigated, and the MC pump performance at differ-
ent consistencies and vacuum was studied by S Cao
and R Oba6 in 1996. In 1998, Cao and Oba7 experimen-
tally tested the performance of MC pulp pump with a
vacuum pump, and the result showed that the charac-
teristic of MC pump performance is determined by
vacuum degree, and vacuum pressure increases with the
increase in pulp consistency. B Erickson,8 in 2000, dis-
cussed the importance of MC pump designed by ITT in
pulp transport system. Using MC pump had obvious
effect on energy saving and reduction of water. In 2003,
V Rejio9 introduced the Sulzer production of pulp
pump medium consistency equipment (MCE), which
has high performance with pulp consistency at 14%–
16% and at temperature 95°C, but the details of experi-
mental test data were unpublished. Pulp and Paper
Laboratory of South China University of Technology
designed an MC pulp pump MCP in 2003, and experi-
ment was studied.10 In 2007, H Li et al.11 established an
MC pump test system, and the performance with con-
sistency at 11% was tested. HF Zhuang,12 in 2012,
investigated the effects of different speeds and vacuum
pressure on the consistency pulp performance, and the
result showed that increase in the pump speed and the
degree of vacuum can improve MC pump performance.
In 2014, XD Ma13,14 analyzed the hydraulic structure
of MC pump and built-in pump performance test plat-
form to study the change in different pulp concentra-
tions, the impeller exit width, and degree of vacuum in
the operating characteristics of pump.
Figure 1. (a, b) Structure of medium consistency pulp pump.
However, there is lack of relevant consistency pulp
pump design theory. In order to obtain a reference the-
oretical guidance, the performance test of MC pump
still needs further study. Therefore, this article will use
the sonar flow measurement system to set up MC pump
test platform. The rate of gas was obtained under differ-
ent conditions of the pulp, and then the pump perfor-
mance curve was studied. The effects of concentration,
degree of vacuum, and speed on pump characteristic
were revealed; this study provided guidance and refer-
ence for MC pump design theory and operation.
Experimental setup and test scheme
Structure of MC pump
The MC pump structure is shown in Figure 1. As com-
pared with general centrifugal pump, a special device,
turbulence generator with fluid consistency pulp, was
installed in front of impeller. There was amount of gas
in MC pulp. The gas was needed to be degased, or MC
pump disabled transportation because of gas gathering
in impeller and then clogging of the flow channel. The
gas in pulp was first separated while pulp flows through
turbulence generator and gathered in impeller inlet,
and then gas flowed through the vent holes on impeller.
With back of impeller blades separating, gas moved
into the vacuum chamber, and last gas was degassed at
suction hole. The parameters are shown in Table 1.
Experimental setup layout
Due to the specialty of pulp, external performance of
pulp pump is very different with general centrifugal
pump, therefore a particular test system was designed
in Figure 2. The experiment set up consists of a MC
pump, a frequency conversion motor, a vacuum pump,
a ball valve, a vacuum manometer, a pressure sensor, a
Ye and Li
Table 1. Design parameters of MC pump.
Flow rate, Qd (m3/h) Head, Hd (m)
Parameters 450 30
Figure 2. Schematic diagram of testing.
Figure 3. Sonar flowmeter.
sonar flowmeter, a slide valve, and a tank. The MC
pump is driven by a four-pole induction motor, and the
speed of induction motor is controlled by an inverter to
realize different rotational speeds. The vacuum pressure
is controlled by ball valve. The pulp flow rate is mea-
sured by sonar flowmeter. The pressure signal is
acquired by pressure sensor. The parameters of sensor
are shown in Table 2.
The sonar flowmeter, SONARtracÒVF/GVF-100,
consists of volume flow rate and gas volume fraction,
as shown in Figure 3. As compared with a general
electro-magnetic flowmeter, the sonar flowmeter does
3
Power, Pd (kW) Efficiency, hd (%) Speed, n (r/min)
68 65 960
not have direct contact with pulp flow, hence the data
are prevented from liner inside pipe, fouling impact.
The sonar flowmeter is interposed to MC pump dis-
charge piping; using sonar measurement principle, we
can measure flow rate and gas rate directly, which has
no pressure limit, no wear, and no signal attenuation
characteristics.
The standard errors of head, shaft-power, and effi-
ciency at different rotational speed are shown in
Table 3. The maximal standard errors of H, P, and h
are 0.022, 0.041, and 0.023, respectively. However, the
MC pulp is complex fluid, and the flow rate can only
4 Advances in Mechanical Engineering
Table 2. Sensor parameters.
Apparatus Test data
Pressure sensor Pressure at pump outlet
Sonar flowmeter Pulp flow rate and gas volume
Vacuum pump Vacuum pressure
Table 3. Standard error of head, shaft-power and efficiency.
960 r/min
H P h H
Standard error (%) 0.01 0.041 0.015
be measured by sonar flowmeter, hence the flow rate
accuracy needs to improve.
Test scheme
For studying the effects of consistency, vacuum pres-
sure, and speed on performance of MC pump, kraft
liner paper pulp at concentrations 7.52%, 9.3%, and
12.1% was used. The vacuum pressure was changed
from 215 to 240 kPa. The vacuum pressure was
adjusted at different concentrations, speed, and flow
rate during experiment. The speeds 960, 140, and
1500 r/min were controlled by a frequency inverter. The
head, efficiency, and gas volume fraction were investi-
gated at different consistency pulp, speed, flow rate,
and vacuum pressure. Three experimental data were
recorded at every condition, and the mean value was
calculated.
The forms of different concentration pulp are shown
in Figure 4. The pulp acts as solid when the concentra-
tion is 12.1%, as shown in Figure 4(a). As water con-
tains in the structure of fiber network, MC pulp does
not have flow properties. With the decrease in the con-
centration, pulp slurry contains more water (see
Figure 4(d)), hence it has a strong flow characteristics.
The pulp physical properties are shown in Table 4.
Figure 5 shows the relationship between the shear
stress and shear rate. When the shear stress was in the
turbulent regime, the shear stress increased linearly.
The shear stress increased with shear rate and pulp
consistency.
Experimental results
The performance curves of MC pump with pumping
water are shown in Figure 6. The pump efficiency, h,
can be expressed as
Range Accuracy (%)
2100 to 1000 kPa 6 0.25
1–10 m/s 65
0%–20%
0 to 20.1 MPa 2.5
1140 r/min 1500 r/min
P h H P h
0.022 0.025 0.019 0.017 0.018 0.023
rgQH
h= 3 100% ð1Þ
P
where r is the density of pulp, g is the gravity, Q is the
flow rate, H is pump head, and P is the input power.
The head curves decrease slightly with the increase
in flow rate, and the maximum efficiency is about 60%.
With increase in speed, head increases, and the maxi-
mum efficiency deviates to large flow.
Influence of pulp concentration
Figure 7 shows performance curves of different concen-
tration pulp, and the performance comparison of MC
pump at speed 960, 1140, and 1500 r/min is shown in
Figure 7(a)–(c). In Figure 7, the vacuum pressure
reaches critical pressure when a little pulp flows out. At
pulp concentration 7.52%, MC pump head decreases
slightly when compared with pumping water, but the
head decreases obviously with the increase in concen-
tration. The efficiency decreases with the decrease in
concentration. At critical pressure, the gas fraction at
pump outlet is \1%. With the increase in flow rate,
the gas fraction of pulp at pump outlet increases.
Effect of vacuum pressure
The performance curves of MC pump at different
vacuum pressures are shown in Figure 8. The pulp is
discharged from vacuum pump at critical vacuum pres-
sure, which results in a waste pulp. With the increase in
vacuum pressure, the head increases and the gas frac-
tion at MC pump outlet decreases. When flow rate is
\100 m3/h flow rate, the head decreases slightly, and
with the flow rate continued to increase, the gas volume
increases, as a result, head decreases sharply. When the
vacuum degree is 233 kPa, efficiency is higher than that
at critical vacuum pressure, indicating that there is an
optimal vacuum value. The MC pump can work
Ye and Li 5

Figure 4. The different consistency pulp: (a) Cm = 12.1%, (b) Cm = 9.3%, (c) Cm = 7.52%, and (d) Cm = 5.13%.

Figure 6. Performance curves with pumping water at different

speeds.
Figure 5. Shear stress versus shear rate of kraft liner paper
pulp and several mass concentrations.
6 Advances in Mechanical Engineering

Figure 7. Performance curves of different concentration pulp: (a) n = 960 r/min, (b) n = 1140 r/min, and (c) n = 1500 r/min.

without vacuum condition, but with the increase in gas blocks impeller passage when pulp concentration is
flow rate, performance significantly deteriorates, and at 12.1%, so MC pump quickly loses transmission
head and efficiency drop significantly. From capacity. With the increase in vacuum pressure, the
Figure 8(b), as a result of no vacuum, large amount of maximum flow rate increases.
Ye and Li 7

Figure 8. Performance curves of different vacuum pressure: (a) Cm = 7.52%, n = 960 r/min and (b) Cm = 12.1%, n = 1140 r/min.

Figure 9. Performance curves at different speeds: (a) Cm = 9.3% and (b) Cm = 12.1%.

Performance curves at different speeds With the increase in rotational speed, head increases
The performance characteristics at different speeds are and efficiency has no obvious change. As a result of
shown in Figure 9, and concentration Cm at 9.3% and increasing speed, centrifugal force increases, hence the
12.1% is shown in Figure 9(a) and (b), respectively. gas in MC pulp is easily separated. Increasing
8 Advances in Mechanical Engineering

Figure 10. Head ratio at different flow rates: (a) Q = 300 m3/h, (b) Q = 450 m3/h, and (c) Q = 500 m3/h.

Hs Es
Table 4. Pulp physical properties. RH = , RE = ð2Þ
Hw Ew
Concentration (%) 7.52 9.3 12.1
where Hs and Es are head and efficiency of pumping
Apparent viscosity (Pa s) 3.68 7.82 12.1 pulp, and HW and EW are head and efficiency of pump-
pH 6.9 6.6 6.5 ing water. At a flow rate 300, 450, and 500 m3/h and
Fiber length (mm) 0.83–1.25
Density (kg/m3) 1007 1024 1051 different concentrations, RH–n curves are shown in
Figure 10. The RH tends to 1, which indicates that
pumping at 7.52% pulp compared with water head has
no significance on decreasing trend. The RH rises at
rotational speed improves gas–liquid separation and
flow rate 300 m3/h and speed 1140 r/min as a result of
rate of gas containing at pump outlet decreases as a
pulp fiber reducing flow loss. With the increase in rota-
result.
tional speed, RH increases at pulp concentration 9.3%,
Without vacuum pump, the gas fraction is acquired
but RH decreases when the concentration is at 12.1%.
by sonar flowmeter, as shown in Table 5. The gas frac-
At flow rate 450 m3/h and 500 m3/h conditions, increas-
tion increases with the increase in pulp concentration,
ing of pumping difficult increases with Pulp concentra-
which coincide with the literature.15
tion, which makes the head ratio falling.
Figure 11 shows that the efficiency ratio, RE,
Head ratio and efficiency ratio changes with rotational speed at different flow rates
The dimensionless analysis is applied to experimental and pulp concentrations. All RE is \1, which shows
comparison. At the same flow rate, head ratio, RH, and that pumping pulp decreases when compared with
efficiency ratio, RE, are expressed as follows water efficiency, and the efficiency ratio decreases with
Ye and Li
Figure 11. Efficiency ratio at different flow rates: (a) Q = 300 m3/h, (b) Q = 450 m3/h, and (c) Q = 500 m3/h.
the increase in pulp concentration. At flow rate
300 m3/h, the RE of pulp concentration 7.52% decreases
with the increase in speed, as shown in Figure 11(a). At
flow rates 450 and 500 m3/h and concentration 9.3%,
the efficiency ratio decreased with the increase in speed.
When pulp concentration is up to 12.1%, the efficiency
ratio decreases first and then increases with the increase
in speed.
Effects of speed on vacuum pressure and gas
fraction
The vacuum pressure and gas fraction are shown in
Figure 12 at rotational speed 960, 1140, and 1500 r/min.
The concentrations used in Figure 12(a) and (b) are
7.52%, 9.3% and 12.1%. The vacuum pressure and gas
fraction increase with the increase in flow rate, and the
gas fraction is \1%. At the same pulp concentration,
vacuum pressure decreases with the increase in rota-
tional speed, which indicates that increasing rotational
9
speed can improve gas–liquid separation and reduce the
suction vacuum pressure.
Vacuum pressure at different concentrations and
rotational speed
During experiment, the vacuum pressure degree is
adjusted according to the flow rate for guaranteeing
the normal operation of MC pump, and the parameters
are shown in Table 6. At the same speed, vacuum pres-
sure increases with the increase in pulp concentration.
Vacuum pressure decreases with the decrease in speed.
Max flow rate
Figure 13 shows MC pump performance without
vacuum pump, and the maximum flow rate at concen-
trations 9.3% and 12.1% is shown in Table 7. Without
vacuum pump, the head of MC pump decreases with
the increase in flow rate. The MC pump works
10 Advances in Mechanical Engineering

Figure 12. Vacuum pressure and gas fraction at different speeds: (a) Cm = 7.52%, (b) Cm = 9.3%, and (c) Cm = 12.1%.
Ye and Li 11

Figure 13. Max flow rate without vacuum pump: (a) Cm = 7.52%, (b) Cm = 9.3%, and (c) Cm = 12.1%.

Table 5. Gas fraction of pulp.

Concentration (%) 0 7.52 9.3 12.1

Gas fraction (%) 0 5.67 8.98 11.73

Table 6. Vacuum pressure at different concentrations and rotational speed.

Concentration, Cm (%) 7.52 (kPa) 9.3 (kPa) 12.1 (kPa)

960 r/min 220 to 226 225 to 229 231 to 235

1140 r/min 218 to 222 223 to 227 228 to 233
1500 r/min 217 to 220 222 to 224 226 to 231

normally without vacuum pump when the pulp concen- shown in Figure 13(b) and (c). The maximum flow rate
tration is at 7.52%. With the increase in pulp consis- decreases with the increase in pulp concentration, but it
tency, the gas in MC pulp increases and the gas blocks increases with the increase in rotational speed, as
impeller channel, hence MC pump stops working, as shown in Table 7.
12
Table 7. Max flow rate without vacuum pump.
Speed (r/min) 960 (m3/h)
Cm = 9.3% 104.7
Cm = 12.1% 53
Conclusion
In this article, experimental set up of an MC pump is
built. The operation performance is studied under dif-
ferent conditions. The head, efficiency, gas fraction,
and max flow rate are investigated at different pulp
concentrations, vacuum pressure, and rotational
speeds. With the increase in concentration, the head
and efficiency decrease obviously. With the increase in
flow rate, the gas fraction of pulp at pump outlet
increases. When the vacuum is 233 kPa, efficiency is
higher than that at critical vacuum pressure, indicating
there is an optimal vacuum value.
In conclusion, it is sensible to mention that MC
pump can work without vacuum condition, but with
the increase in flow rate, performance significantly
deteriorates, and head and efficiency drop significantly.
With the increase in rotational speed, head increases
and efficiency has no obvious change. As a result of
increase in speed, centrifugal force increases, so the gas
in MC pulp is more easily separated. Increasing rota-
tional speed improves gas–liquid separation. The maxi-
mum flow rate decreases with the increase in pulp
concentration, hence rotational speed increases.
Declaration of conflicting interests
The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with
respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this
article.
Funding
The author(s) disclosed receipt of the following financial sup-
port for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this
article: The support of Sichuan province department of edu-
cation (Grant No. 17ZA0363), the Key Project of Xihua
University (Grant No. Z1620408), Open Fund of Key
Laboratory of Fluid and Power Machinery, Ministry of
Education, Xihua University (Grant No. szjj2016-001) and
National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant No
51379179) is gratefully acknowledged. Thanks to my profes-
sor, Li Hong, and our research group for helping me.
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Appendix 1
Notation
Ca gas fraction (%)
Cm mass concentration (%)
Es efficiency of pumping pulp
Ew efficiency of pumping water
H head (m)
Hs head of pumping pulp
Ye and Li 13

Hw head of pumping water Subscripts

N speed (r/min)
Q flow rate (m3/h) a gas
RE efficiency ratio E efficiency
RH head ratio H head
m pulp mass
h efficiency S pulp
W water