The effect of air injection system on airlift pump performance

Abstract

In the current study, a novel design of an air injection system for an airlift pump was designed and tested. The pump has a circular cross-section and composed of three parts; suction pipe, injection system, and riser pipe. The riser pipe has a diameter of 31.7 mm and a length of 2 m. The performance of the pump was tested using different submergence ratios, ranging from 0.15 to 0.3, and the injected airflow rate was ranging from 1.65 kg/h to 13.32 kg/h. The results showed that both the airflow rate and the submergence ratio have a significant effect on the capacity and performance of the pump. Besides, it was found that the best range of pump efficiency was in the slug and slug-churn flow regimes. Moreover, the highest efficiency was at the most significant submergence ratio of 0.3. A reasonable enhancement in water flow rate was achieved using the current air injection design when compared with the conventional airlift pump injections system.

Keywords

• airlift pump
• injection system
• two-phase flow