Author(s): D. James Farivar; David Greenwood; Shahrooz Soltani
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Keywords: No Keywords
Abstract: According to the U. S. Department of Energy 25% of the energy used by industrial motors are consumed by motor driven pumps. With the current global energy crisis, energy saving should be main concern of any business entity. Extensive study was performed to obtain a procedure to save energy when operating multiple parallel variable-speed centrifugal pumps. It is shown that the pump head-flow curve can be well simulated by a fifth-order polynomial, and the equal efficiency curves, for pump head-flow curves at reduced speed, by quadratic functions. Previous studies have used a quadratic equation as best fit for pump head-flow curve. In a majority of pumps this simulation is not accurate and major error is introduced. The results of those studies indicated that the pumps should be run at different speed. Our actual case studies show that in order to minimize the energy consumption the pumps should be operated at equal speed, with any number of pumps that meet the flow and head requirement.
Year: 2009