Chapter 9 : Supporting equipments:

Pumps Mixing Equipment Drying Equipment

Todays lesson:
Pumps Centrifugal Pumps Operating principles Safety : - Cavitation - Backflow NPSH
- NPSHA AND NPSHR

LESSON OBJECTIVES :Today's lesson objectives : By the end of the class, the students are expected to be able : To explain the operating principles of centrifugal and positive displacement pumps. To describe the safety design and operation of pumps. To determine the Net Positive Suction Head (NPSH) required and available.

PumpsIntroduction
By principle, pumps are used to transfer fluids from one point to other point over a distance and also it is meant to do work. Pumps can be divided into 2 major groups; Centrifugal Positive displacements - reciprocating or rotary

PumpsIntroduction
The classifications of these groups are made based on way the energy being delivered to the liquid. The centrifugal pumps uses centrifugal forces to transfer liquid meanwhile positive displacement pumps transfer the liquid by means of pressurizing the liquid by displacement.

PumpsOperation Principles
Operating Principle of Centrifugal Pumps As mentioned, centrifugal pumps pressurizes the fluids by means of centrifugal force in which this force will causing the kinetic energy of the fluids to increase and consequently convert the kinetic energy to pressure energy.

PumpsOperating Principles
There are numerous advantages of the centrifugal pumps that allow the wide range of usage in refinery and petrochemical industry. Among the advantages of the centrifugal pumps are: Economical due to low cost Capability to be operated in wide range of volume and pressure (head) outputs. Require less maintenance works Ability of handling liquids that contaminated with heavy particles. Need less space as it is considered small.

PumpsOperating Principles

PumpsOperating Principles
At point A, the fluid is feed to the inlet of the pump known as suction side. Then, the fluid will enter to the center of the pumps at the rapidly rotating fan-shaped impeller eye indicated by point B. Afterwards, the fluids are flung radially along the impeller (point C) due to the generated centrifugal forces that accelerates the fluids towards the discharge area. Finally, at point D, the pressurized fluids are discharged from the pumps due to the conversion from kinetic energy to pressure energy.

Pumps Safety: Cavitation

In designing a pump, one of the most important considerations that need to be taken into account is the cavitations problem. Cavitations problem occurs when the pressure of the liquid is less than its vapor pressure at the same temperature, which resulted in the formation of vapors bubbles.

PumpsCavitation
The formations of these bubbles vapors create lowpressure region in the impeller area.

This condition will encourage the highpressure liquid to enter to these lower pressure regions created by the vapors bubbles and causing the bubbles acting like bullets that will hit and collapse on the blades and consequently damaging the impeller.
The formation of the vapor bubbles will also create noise and cause the pumps to vibrate and for worse cases the impeller might be break off into small pieces.

PumpsSafety: Cavitation
To overcome this problem it is vital to have the available NPSHA (Net Positive Suction Head Available) of the pump is greater than or equal to the required NPSHR (Net Positive Suction Head Required).

NPSHA > NPSHR

To stop the cavitations it can be done also by raising the suction pressure of the pumps (NPSHA) or decreasing the pumping rate (decreasing NPSHR).

PumpsSafety: Cavitation

PumpsSafety: Backflow
One of the major safety aspects that have been considered in the operation of pumps is prevention of the backflow condition of process fluids.
This backflow phenomenon will create severe impact on the pumps particularly on the impeller blades. As the protection, a check valve is usually installed at the outlet of the discharged side of the pumps.

PumpsSafety: Backflow
For a check valve, there is a flipper that operating based on the concept of pressure difference. If the pressure of the discharged pumps is higher than pipeline pressure then this flipper will be opened towards the pipeline flow.

PumpsSafety: Backflow

PumpsSafety : Backflow
Conversely, if the discharged pressure of the pumps is lower than pipeline pressure thus the flipper will be tend to be closed towards the direction to the pump.

PumpsSafety: Backflow
To avoid the backflow situation from being experienced by the pumps, it is essential to ensure that the pumps will have minimum flow at the suction side of the pump. Usually, there is a spill back line provided at the suction side of the pumps in order to add up any shortage of the flow to the pumps.