The Effect of Differential Pressure and Permanent Pressure Loss on Multi-Hole Orifice Plate

The widely used orifice plate falls under restricted type flow devices, has the highest differential pressure and permanent pressure drop in the ensemble. The objective is to curtail the permanent pressure drop and maintain the differential pressure across the orifice plate, and thereby, the power required to pump the liquid is retrenched. So, three-hole, four-hole and five-hole orifice plates with an identical area to that of the single-hole orifice plate were designed and experiments were carried out. It is observed that the experimental results almost matched with the simulation data. In comparing the performance, the four-hole orifice plate yielded a higher differential pressure and higher-pressure loss. In contrast, the five-hole orifice yielded lower differential pressure and higher-pressure loss compared to the single-hole orifice plate. In case of three-hole orifice plate it performed better than the single-hole orifice with reduced pressure loss and higher differential pressure. It was also found that the power consumed by the pump for pumping was lower for three-hole, four-hole and five-hole orifice plates compared to the single-hole orifice plate. Thus, the three-hole orifice plate performs better than a single-hole orifice plate in terms of higher differential pressure, reduced permanent pressure loss and lower power consumption of the pump.