Flow Fields in Liquid Ring Vacuum Pump: A Simulation and Experimental Study

The gas-liquid two-phase flow fields,in liquid ring vacuum pump,were empirically approximated,mathematically modeled,numerically simulated with ANSYS software and experimentally evaluated for design optimization.The influence of the impeller blade number,blade profile and rotation speed on the properties of the flow fields,including,but not limited to the distributions of air and water,dynamic distributions of the velocity and pressure of air and water,pumping speed in operation mode,was investigated via simulation.The prototyped liquid ring vacuum pump,designed on the basis of structural optimization via simulation,was constructed and tested.The preliminary results show that the newly-developed liquid ring vacuum pump meets all the technical requirements.We suggest that the self-developed simulation scheme be of some technological interest in design of novel liquid ring vacuum pump because of lower cost,shorter development cycle,higher success-rate and greater economic impact.