Hydraulic design of a boiler feed pump to ensure stable operation at reduced flows

The boiler feed pumps for industrial and power station boilers have to operate often at reduced capacities to meet the changing demand of steam and electricity. The operation of centrifugal pumps at reduced capacities lead to a number of unfavourable results seriously affecting the pump reliability. Some of these, such as internal recirculation of flow inside the pump have been recently studied. The paper discusses these unfavourable results and analyses various design factors which can control unstable operation of the pumps at reduced flows. The commissioning problems of boiler feed pumps faced at Rajasthan Atomic Power Plant at Kota and modifications carried out in the light of the above studies are described in the paper. (author). 2 tabs