Research of the cavitation performance of the condensate pump

Condensate pump is an important part of power plant circulation systems, which is used to pump condensate water. Because the condensate water pressure is very low, the first impeller of the condensate pump must have a good cavitation performance. Numerical simulation was employed to study the first impeller cavitation performance. The first impeller was set in the condensate pump barrel, and the double suction casing was kept, the parts after the double suction casing was simplified as tube. The simplicity can guarantee the inlet and outlet conditions of the impeller. Based on the RANS and SST k − ω turbulence model, CFD software was used to simulate the condensate pump at different working conditions. The numerical simulation shows that cavitation occurred at the suction side of the blades closing to the leading edge. The cavitation performance of the impeller was predicted based on the numerical calculation. Comparing with the experimental results, the numerical simulation result is smaller than that of the experiment in small flux, and the cavitation performance trend is agreed with that of the experiments.