The multiphase flow pumps cover a wide range of industrial sectors extending across petrochemical, metallurgy, and dredging, chemical industry, paint, and construction. The major application is the handling of wet gas and vapor that will condense partially during the compression stage. The main progress in the area of multiphase pumps has been the innovation of a computational fluid dynamics (CFD) numerical approach to simulate three‐dimensional flows inside the pump and to predict pump performance. CFD undoubtedly constitutes one of the most promising approaches for the design, analysis, and performance assessment of complex machines. However, practical application of the CFD tool to determine the internal flow field in multiphase pumps is still far from reality owing to the limitations of a detailed three‐dimensional model of the pump and accuracy of multiphase flow simulation. This review accentuates the influence of different geometrical and dynamical parameters on the performance of the pump and the use of CFD simulation to predict the detailed flow patterns of fluid mixtures. CFD analysis has unearthed the fact that the pattern of inner flow varies with the flow rate and concentration of each phase and the rotation speed of the impeller and number of blades were also found to considerably impact pump performance.

Liquivac pumps, with their unique shaped twin start helical rotor, have found utility in various sectors but the major drawback limiting in their global exploitation is their low performance. This paper investigates the study of performance of the Liquivac pump produced by Tomlinson Hall Ltd. Experimental data was used to validate a numerical model developed in Ansys Fluent 20.2 for the Liquivac pump. Four different geometric models of the rotor were tested numerically to find the optimum design using blade number and pitch length as the criteria to achieve improved efficiency. The choice of turbulence model is an important factor in the most accurate prediction with computational fluid dynamics (CFD) simulation. Four different turbulence models were validated with experimental measurements. The realizable K-ε model gave the most accurate performance predictions with a relative deviation of 3.8%. So, the realizable K-ε model was employed for further parametric optimization of the rotor. The results indicate a reasonable improvement in the head and efficiency of the Liquivac pump with a new rotor geometry of four equidistant blades in the front, back and four flights with 30 mm pitch. This is attributed to the most favourable balance between the different losses and most guided and uniform flow inside the rotor channels.