Performance prediction of a centrifugal pump delivering non-Newtonian slurry

Centrifugal pump has been used for the transport of the multiphases particularly slurry (solid-liquid mixture) in the petroleum and chemical industry. The present article describes the experimental analysis of a centrifugal pump delivering non-Newtonian fluids and reports the pump's performance characteristics under different flow conditions. The mixture is prepared by mixing right quantities of bentonite powder, water, and Na2CO3 to give the desired fluids having different viscosities. It was observed that the head and the efficiency of the pump decrease with the increase in fluid viscosity at the rated speed. The pump performance depends on the bentonite concentration in water, which changes rheological property of the fluid. To avoid experimental difficulties and to find correlations among the parameters, a polynomial regression (PR) model was fit to predict the head and efficiency. The PR models predict head and efficiency with relative percentage error of 3.137% and 5.096%, respectively.