Modeling Gas-Liquid Head Performance of Electrical Submersible Pumps

This study presents a new gas-liquid model to predict electrical submersible pumps head performance. The newly derived approach based on gas-liquid momentum equations along pump channels has improved the Sachdeva model (Sachdeva, R., Doty, D. R., and Schmidt, Z., 1988, “Two-Phase Flow through Electrical Submersible Pumps,” Ph.D. dissertation, The University of Tulsa, Oklahoma; 1994, “Performance of Electric Submersible Pumps in Gassy Wells,” SPE Prod. Facil., 9, pp. 55–60) in the petroleum industry and generalized the Minemura model (Minemura, K., Uchiyama, T., Shoda, S. and Kazuyuki, E., 1998, “Prediction of Air-Water Two-Phase Flow Performance of a Centrifugal Pump Based on One-Dimensional Two-Fluid Model,” ASME J. Fluids. Eng., 120, pp. 327–334) in the nuclear industry. The new two-phase model includes novel approaches for wall frictional losses for each phase using a gas-liquid stratified assumption and existing correlations, a new shock loss model incorporating rotational speeds, a new correlation for drag coefficient and interfacial characteristic length effects by fitting the model results with experimental data, and an algorithm to solve the model equations. The model can predict pressure and void fraction distributions along impellers and diffusers in addition to the pump head performance curve under different fluid properties, pump intake conditions, and rotational speeds.