Does pressure pulsation from your China high head centrifugal slurry pump cause damage?

Pulsation is very harmful to certain equipment and machinery. In this article, you will learn how to counter these pulsations with a quick fix; staggered blade impellers.

The staggered vane impeller has separate vanes, and the two sets of vanes are offset from one another. This type of impeller is designed to reduce pressure pulsations during pumping. When each blade passes through the water dividing line, pulsation occurs in the centrifugal pump. This action can be described as quickly closing and opening the valve each time the blade passes.

The impeller of the China high head centrifugal slurry pump is the most important factor in pressure pulsation. The geometry is one of the most important parts of the impeller, because when the blades of the impeller are staggered, only half of the blade width passes at a time. This means that the number of passes of the partial blades through the water line is twice that of the case where they are not staggered, and the volume of each blade is kept half. Due to the increase in blade throughput and the reduction in blade volume, the overall pulsation experienced by the pump has a lower amplitude but a higher frequency.

Interleaved vane impellers of the China high head centrifugal slurry pumps are commonly used in large double suction centrifugal pumps. They first started using them in the paper industry, where low pressure pulsations are extremely important. Many machines used in papermaking do not handle high pressure pulsations, so paper quality is affected. To solve this problem, they implemented a staggered blade impeller and have been using it ever since. It is used not only in the paper industry, but also in any application where it is desirable to reduce the amplitude of the pulsation.

Although it is always preferred that the pulsation is small or not pulsating, such an impeller can solve this problem, but these are not suitable for each application. Tests have shown that staggered blade impellers slightly reduce pump efficiency. There are many different factors to consider when deciding whether this impeller is right for you, including the amount of pressure allowed, the pressure frequency, and the efficiency required.

If you think your application may benefit from the split blade impeller, please contact us. We are happy to analyze your system and help make the appropriate adjustments.