Performance Study of an Air-Oil Pump and Separator Solution
Many applications need to extract a certain phase from a multiphase flow like in oil extraction, flow in nuclear power plants, aircraft lubrication systems, etc. The Aero-Thermo-Mechanics (ATM) Department of Universiteé Libre de Bruxelles (ULB) is developing an original system to extract the gas from a liquid-gas flow together with increasing the pressure of the liquid phase. This system will help to reduce the complexity and the oil consumption of aeroengine lubrication systems. This paper will summarise the results of a first air/oil prototype. It will also present the guidelines learned from this prototype and used to design a second version of the integrated pump and separator. A newly developed oil consumption measurement system will also be presented. Based on previous results, on litterature review and on an in-house theoretical model, the paper will explain theoretically how the separation efficiency is affected by the particle distribution at the inlet of the prototype, and by the key parameters identified in different studies. Finally the conclusions will present the lessons learned through the design and tests of these two prototypes and the future work will be presented.