Abstract: Usually chemical axial pump doesn’t mount diffusion vane because the distance between impeller and elbow is too short. But this manner would waste energy greatly because the kinetic energy associated with circular velocity at impeller outlet will dissipate gradually in flow passage. In order to increase the unit efficiency, computational fluid dynamics method is adopted to explore the internal flow characteristics for different diffusion vane assemblies. The mechanics is studied, which can explain why hydraulic performance becomes deteriorative when the normal diffusion vane is installed in chemical axial pump. Numerical simulation results indicate that the non-uniform diffusion vane assembly can optimize the unit hydraulic performance effectively.

Key words: Axial pump, CFD, Non-uniform diffusion vane, Numerical simulation