A parametric study for improving the centrifugal pump impeller for use in viscous fluid pumping

Essentially, performance of centrifugal pumps is affected when pumping viscous fluids. In this paper a new idea is proposed to overcome the undesirable effects of viscosity on the pump performance parameters. This idea based on this matter that one specific impeller can be designed, made and installed on the pump for pumping of one fluid with specific viscosity. Therefore a specific pump can be used for pumping of different fluids with different viscosity, by replacement of pump impeller. Replacement of the impeller is more cost effective in comparison to the replacement of the whole of the pump. Passage width and outlet angle of impeller are considered as design variables and the effects of such variables investigated using experimentally validated numerical model. The H-Q, P-Q and eta-Q graphs are extracted experimentally for the improved impeller, which show good improvement in comparison with original impeller.