Abstract: As a key equipment to transport offshore oil and gas resources, the transport performance of multiphase pumps directly affects the production efficiency and transport cost of oil and gas. To study the effect of splitter blades on the flow characteristics of a multiphase pump, in this work, an ANSYS CFX code is used to numerically simulate its flows in the sections before and behind the blades at the gas volume fractions of 5%, 10%, and 15%. The results indicate the optimized single-stage head of the pump is increased by 18.9%, 23.5%, and 24.2% at the three fractions respectively. Installing the splitter blades significantly improves the pressurization performance of the pump and the effect of gas volume fraction on the velocity distribution pattern of the liquid phase in the impeller. And it can inhibit the occurrence of gas phase aggregation in the impeller and makes its gas phase distribution more uniform.

Key words: multiphase pump, splitter blades, gas volume fraction, flow characteristics