Experimental study on pumping behavior of twin-screw multiphase pump

To examine the effect of pressure differences and gas void fractions (GVF) on volume flow rates and power consumptions, an experimental investigation was conducted under different operating conditions based on a twin-screw multiphase pump prototype. Experimental results show that, for liquid pumping only, the flow rate decreased by 3.7% and the power consumption increased by 45.3% when the pressure difference increased from 0.4 MPa to 1.0 MPa. For multiphase fluid pumping, at the pressure difference of 0.4 MPa and 1.0 MPa, the flow rate decreased by 18.7% and 25.7% with an increase of gas void fraction from 20% to 90%, respectively, and the power consumption decreased by 2.5% and 9.3%, respectively. The theoretical simulation results agree reasonably well with the experimental data at GVF from 0 to 80%.