feature pumping with low NPSH
Dear ‘Pump Guy’…
Larry Bachus (aka The Pump Guy) discusses the effects on pump performance of fluid
velocity, shearing and suction piping, and the underlying issue of adequate net positive
suction head.
I
always like it when someone
speaks up in class or when I
receive a question by e-mail. The
person who asks a question is
representing the others, who might be
afraid to ask. The request for more
information or a clarification is also a
message to me that I can improve my
communication to the class. And the
best way to know a million answers is
to investigate and research a million
and one questions.
So then I find myself drifting back and
forth from my desktop to the kitchen
at 1:30 a.m., raiding the fridge and
munching, while I ponder the
questions put to the ‘Pump Guy’.
Dear Pump Guy,
I am a mechanical engineer here in
Charlotte, NC. We engineer, procure
and build new fossil-fueled power
stations. I recently read your magazine
article on back pullout pumps.
I am wondering if you can shed some light
on a topic that we have been debating
(arguing about) in the office. According
to our supplier’s pump manual (p. 607),
“Suction pipe velocities should be in the 5
to 8 feet per second range unless suction
conditions are unusually good. Higher
velocities will increase friction loss and
can result in troublesome air or vapor
separation”.
Assuming the NPSH criteria is met, what
is wrong with higher velocities? Does
dissolved air in water separate and form
air bubbles at high line velocities?
Any comment would be welcome.
Regards,
J. P., P.E.
Mechanical & Layout Engineering
Supervisor
WORLD PUMPS March 2004
‘Hello J.P.,
To answer your question, I went to my
copy of the same manual and read it
for myself. Yep!! That’s what it says all
right. Let’s home in on the words…
“unusually good”. What does that
mean?
When the teacher tells the students to
“be good”, each student perceives “be
good” with a different meaning. One
child thinks it means to stop looking
out the window, another thinks it
means don’t cheat on the quiz, or that
he should tidy his desk, or sit up
straight, or pay attention… Maybe the
teacher meant “Be quiet!” Then, why
didn’t she say what she meant?
Next, what does “unusually good”
mean? Is this different from “usually
good”? How is this different from just
plain “good”?
Back to the teacher; maybe what she
meant was, “stop throwing spitballs,
don’t look out the window, stop
doodling, don’t cheat, straighten your
desk and papers, sit up straight, pay
attention, and shut up”! Well then,
she should have said what she meant.
Maybe your pump company meant “all
that stuff”, too. So let’s cover “all that
stuff”…’
The effects of shear
We’ll start with the liquid. Some
liquids are more sensitive to shear.
This means their properties will
change with agitation or turbulence.
Dissolved gases and other components
may separate from the liquid and come
out of suspension. Shear is plotted on a
stress–strain graph. Temperature is a
factor and the liquid’s viscosity is a
factor. Viscosity is quantified as shear
stress / rate of shear. I hate it when I
hear words like pseudo-plastic,
dilatant, rheopectic and thixotropic. If
I used those words, people would stop
writing to the Pump Guy. They
depend on me for real-world words
and practical explanations. Anyway,
the shear sensitivity must be
considered. It’s not an issue with most
common liquids, but if you’re pumping
blood, emulsions, or peanut butter,
then learn more about shear
sensitivity.
Soapy water in the bathtub tends to
foam, froth and form bubbles when the
rug rats (kids and grandkids) are
splashing (shearing is the correct word).
Thirty years ago, fresh out of university, I
moved into an apartment with an
automatic dishwasher. I didn’t have any
automatic dishwasher detergent so I
used laundry soap in my dishwasher. The
kitchen filled with suds! At the ocean,
the seawater with salt tends to foam
and froth as the waves break (shear)
against the beach. So pumping
detergents and hydroxides (NaOH,
CaOH), and electrolytes including
salts (NaCl, NH4Cl, CaCl e.g. boiler
and water treatment chemicals), is
likely to form bubbles with shear in
the suction pipe.
Consider moving (shearing) liquids
with entrained gas, and liquids with a
low vapour pressure. Certainly everyone
has opened a can of soda after it has been
dropped, and had it spew. It’s one thing
to shake and explode a bottle of
champagne if you have just won the
NASCAR 500 at Talladega, but you
wouldn’t do that in your kitchen, would
you? You can shake a canister of propane
or refrigerant and hear the liquid
sloshing inside the container. Yet, when
you open the valve and the liquid shears
through the exit nozzle, there is only gas.
Nothing drips onto the floor. So these
gassing liquids are susceptible to change
phase with shear and velocity.
0262 1762/04 © 2004 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved 29
 feature pumping with low NPSH
Suction piping arrangement is crucial
I was working as a pump consultant in a steam plant a while ago
and the maintenance engineer directed me to this sick pump
(Figure 1). The pump drains a tank of cold water and supplies the
plant with industrial water pressure. The engineer said that
although this is not a critical pumping application, it was just
Figure 1. The sick pump.
Figure 2. The coupling guard is missing.
Figure 3. Radial control bearings.
about the most problematic pump in the whole plant. The pump
leaks all the time (there’s a constant pool of leakage, growing algae
and ferns on the pump foundation) and the coupling, bearings and
seals had been failing three or four times per year for the past 12
years. The engineer said they injected the bearings with synthetic
grease in an effort to extend the life of the bearings, but the
synthetic grease was not performing well.
The engineer said they had installed numerous Chesterton, John
Crane and Dura mechanical seals over the years in an effort to stop
the leakage, but none of the seals would give good service on this
cold-water pump. He said the seal salesmen avoided this pump and
had stopped visiting the plant. He said they had gone back to packing
the pump with rope packing. The engineer asked me to recommend a
good mechanical seal.
I immediately noticed that there was no coupling guard between the
motor and pump (Figure 2). The engineer said that with so many
30 www.worldpumps.com
emergency teardowns over the years, the coupling guard had been lost
or mislaid. As I observed the pump, I saw that it was a horizontal
axially split case pump. This pump does not use axial control bearings
because the shaft is considered to be axially stable. You can see the
radial control bearings on both ends of the shaft (Figure 3). Because of
Figure 4. The curled hose and 90º elbow are destroying the pump’s axial
stability.
Figure 5. Doctored image showing recommended piping arrangement.
its design, half of the suction flow enters into each of the two eyes of
the double suction impeller, and tends to axially stabilize the shaft.
So, the bearings must only limit radial motion and imbalance in the
shaft.
The suction piping leading to this type of pump must be straight. This
length of curled hose and the horizontal 90º elbow at the pump’s
suction nozzle is destroying the axial stability (Figure 4). The velocity
and volume of flow through the elbow’s OD is about five times greater
than through the ID of the elbow. This overloads the left eye of the
impeller and the entire shaft assembly is shifting to the right away
from the motor.
Those radial bearings are not designed to limit or control axial thrust.
The faces are opening on the left mechanical seal, and the faces are
crushing and grinding on the right mechanical seal. And the coupling
faces are separating.
I did not recommend any brand of mechanical seal or synthetic
grease. I recommended that he scrap that curved hose and elbow
assembly and install a straight length of pipe leading to the pump’s
suction (Figure 5). A pump’s design is not really complicated. It’s just
a rotating shaft inside a cast housing. It certainly doesn’t have as many
parts and components in relative motion as the engine of your car, or
a cuckoo clock (two devices that will run for years without problems).
Most pump problems actually occur outside the pump.
Give your seals and bearings their best opportunity to survive. Pay
attention to the suction piping arrangement.
WORLD PUMPS March 2004

Standard cold water has dissolved
oxygen in it. That’s what the fish
breathe. This dissolved oxygen forms
on the bottom of a saucepan (as tiny
bubbles) when heated on the stove
before the actual boiling begins. This
is also the reason that DA (deaerator)
tanks were invented for boiler-feed
water pumps. Turbulence and velocity
(shear) can cause separation.
Suction piping
As for suction piping, the Pump Guy
says this should be as short as possible
(see box). The pump should be as
close to the suction source as possible
with minimum piping. Short pipe
means short shear. Long pipe means
sustained shear even if the shear is low.
If the pump is draining a tank, mount
the pump on the same tank pad if
possible. Consider a submersible
pump. You can’t get any closer than
putting the pump inside the tank.
The suction piping should also be as
straight as possible. (Put this in your
cheat sheets.) Avoid elbows and turns.
Eliminate elbows, if possible; if turns
are necessary they should be long,
sweeping turns and they should be as
far away from the suction nozzle as
possible. There should be a straight
run of pipe leading to the pump
suction nozzle. The straight run may
slope slightly upwards towards the
pump if the suction source is below the
pump centre-line.
The suction piping should have only
minimum valves, flanges and intrusive
instrumentation (probes, paddle-
wheels, etc.) as required. All suction
valves and intrusive instrumentation
should be as far upstream from the
pump suction as possible. (This goes
into your cheat sheets.) This reduces
turbulence (shear) to the pump.
Minimally, with oversized diameter
suction piping, there might be an
eccentric pipe reducer (coming up
from the bottom) at the pump suction
nozzle, and a suction pressure gauge
(not considered intrusive) screwed
into a boss on the housing at the
lateral centre-line.
WORLD PUMPS March 2004
feature pumping with low NPSH
The diameter (ID) of suction piping
should be as large as possible. The
shear is inversely proportional to the
diameter. This means that as the
diameter increases, the shear
decreases. (Put this into your cheat
sheets.) If the pump has a 6-inch
suction nozzle, the worst thing you can
do is bring 6-inch or smaller diameter
pipe to the pump. It is infinitely better
to bring 8-inch or even 10-inch pipe
to the pump and then pass through a
10-to-6-inch eccentric reducer at the
pump suction nozzle.
Regarding fluid velocity in a pipe, 5–8
ft/s is about the industry standard. The
Pump Guy says slower is better: 4 ft/s is
better than 5, and 3 ft/s is better than 4.
The limiting factor is cost. There will
probably come a point where the
purchasing agent won’t let you buy 10-
inch diameter pipe for 1 gpm of flow.
However, slower is always better unless
there is an engineering, practical or
safety reason for high velocity.
When pumping solids and slurry, then
there may be a good reason for higher
fluid velocity. If the velocity were too
slow, then the solids might settle and
form a dam in the pipe. In this case,
maybe a certain higher velocity must
be respected.
Sometimes firemen need high
velocity. A burning building puts out a
lot of heat and may collapse or
explode. The firemen are forced to
fight the fire from a distance. When
they need to squirt the water from 100
feet away, or drag a heavy fire hose up a
ladder, then high fluid velocity comes
in handy.
NPSH criteria
Up to this point we’ve covered the
liquid and the suction piping leading to
the pump. Everything I’ve said so far,
except for firemen and shear sensitive
liquids, brings me to the next point,
which is the pump. There is nothing
wrong with higher suction pipe
velocities provided that the NPSH (net
positive suction head) criteria NPSHA
and NPSHR are met.
NPSHA is the energy in the fluid
available to the pump. The fluid and
the pumping system determine this
energy. Certain factors add to or
increase the available energy. Other
factors subtract from or decrease that
energy. The addition and subtraction
of these factors is the total energy,
called NPSHA. The NPSHA must be
greater than the NPSHR with as much
safety margin as possible.
The NPSHR is the energy in the fluid
required by the pump. It’s the pump’s
minimum requirement at the impeller’s
eye. Think of it this way (and put it into
your cheat sheets). You breathe because
your body requires oxygen. You get this
required oxygen from the atmospheric
air. The available oxygen in the air must
always be greater than the oxygen that
your body requires. If your body should
require more oxygen than the oxygen
available to your body, then you would
be starved of oxygen. The degree of
starvation will determine how long
before you die. Likewise, the NPSHA
available in the system must always be
greater than the NPSHR required by the
pump. The NPSHR is charted at
different flows on the pump’s
performance curve.
Changing definitions
As I write this, the definitions for
NPSHA and NPSHR are changing.
The current NPSHR (as decided by
the Hydraulics Institute (HI) and the
pump manufacturers) of a pump is a
value representing a 3% loss in pump
performance due to decreased suction
head (energy). And if NPSHA should
be greater than NPSHR, then the
current NPSHA value for a system
could be anything from 0% loss of
function up to 2.999% loss in pump
function before declaring inadequate
NPSHA. Under the current
definition, the pump would be in
obvious cavitation even when the
system’s NPSHA is minimally above
the NPSHR.
Some people say this is crazy, and it is.
I mean, do you really have to faint
before someone declares that the
www.worldpumps.com 31
 feature pumping with low NPSH
oxygen supply is inadequate? This is
like the US National Highway Traffic
Safety Administration establishing
the rule that the automobile bumper
must withstand a 5 mph (8 km/h)
impact with no damage. Tremendous
if you don’t drive more than 5 mph.
When was the last time that you drove
to work or the grocery store at 5 mph?
How about a more realistic value?
Pump users are demanding NPSHR
values reflecting zero loss of pump
performance, and higher NPSHA
safety margins. The manufacturers are
crying that the new values will be
prohibitively excessive and impossible
to meet. It’s somewhat akin to
declaring that all SUVs should
immediately get the gasoline mileage
of a compact passenger car.
Another issue is the fact that written
pump literature normally lists the
NPSHR value at BEP, the best efficiency
point. This is the value used by pump
salesmen to sell a pump. This is the
value used to compare competing pumps
for purchase. However, the BEP is
practically never the actual duty point of
a pump. The operator normally has
absolutely no idea where his pump is
operating on its curve… because he
doesn’t have, or doesn’t interpret, the
instrumentation. So what happens?
As the pump moves on its curve out to
the right of the BEP the NPSHR rises
exponentially. One of the elements of
the NPSHA is the Hf (friction head),
which robs (subtracts) energy from the
fluid. The Hf rises by the square of the
increase in velocity and flow, so twice
the flow is four times the Hf, and as the
flow and turbulence increases dissolved
air can come out of the liquid. In this
sense, if the published NPSHR is the
value at the BEP, and the pump is
operating to the right of the BEP on its
curve, then are the criteria actually
being met? Probably not.
Over the years, I’ve come to view the
friction constant on a pipe schedule
as a type of energy tax. Consulting
the HI value for 2” schedule 40
carbon steel pipes, the friction
constant (Kf) is 3.10 (call it 3.10%
32 www.worldpumps.com
energy tax) at 40 gpm. The velocity
through the 2” pipe is 3.82 ft/s. It is
an 11.4% energy tax (Kf = 11.4) at 80
gpm with the velocity at 7.65 ft/s, and
a 43% energy tax at 160 gpm with the
velocity at 15.3 ft/s in a 2” pipe. We
can observe that the energy losses
(Kf) are modest at 5 to 8 ft per second
... and 4 ft/s is better than 5 etc. In a
perfect world the fluid velocity would
only be fast enough to prevent solids
from settling and forming an
obstruction in the pipe, or to meet a
safety or practical need.
Watch for new published literature
indicating that the criteria for NPSH
has changed, along with the expected
unhappy reaction from the pump
manufacturers, system specifiers and
purchasing agents. The Pump Guy is
in favour of this and believes that we
need more realistic values. That is,
unless you like to continually rebuild
and repair pumps.
Monitoring NPSHA
Remember that the NPSHR is listed on
most family pump curves. The NPSHA
can be closely approximated by simply
observing the pumping system. And, the
NPSHA can be precisely measured with
some simple instrumentation. In-
adequate NPSHA can be interpreted
with instrumentation on the pump
suction nozzle and piping. Please include
some training on how to do this.
Remember that all premature failure in
an industrial pump is induced by one of
three factors. There is maintenance-
induced premature failure. There is
operations-induced premature failure.
And, there is design-induced premature
failure. Pump problems resulting from
inadequate suction piping would be a
design-induced failure. That usually
means the person who specifies the
piping at the construction phase, or the
person who authorizes a change to the
piping arrangement after the plant is
commissioned.
In my experience, I find that most
instrumentation technicians are ready
and waiting to install the adequate
instrumentation on the equipment. But
sadly, the process engineers and
operators don’t even know what
information they need to resolve
problems in the pumps. And other
process personnel wouldn’t know how to
interpret the information if they had it.
So, we pretend that most pump failure is
a surprise, unexpected, unanticipated
event. The mechanics think the
operators are abusing the pumps. The
operators think the mechanics don’t
know how to adequately rebuild the
pumps. And management decides to
solve the problem by sending everyone
to a bearing installation class.
As a pump lecturer and trainer, I
always spend time covering these
points so that the operators
understand the gauges and meters of
their profession, and can give the best
information to the maintenance
engineers and technicians, who will
do the repairs. I encourage all
supervisors, bosses and foremen to go
over these points with your mechanics
and operators. We’re all charged with
reducing downtime, stopping leaks,
conserving energy and doing more
with less people.
In about 80% of what you perceive as
unscheduled downtime, emergency
maintenance, the pump was telling
you the problem for hours, days and
even weeks before the breakdown
event occurred. If you’re responsible
for pump maintenance, keep this
column or store this magazine where
you can find it quickly. It is your cheat
sheet of useful pump info. ■
CONTACT
The Pump Guy is Larry Bachus, a pump
consultant, lecturer and inventor based
in Nashville, Tennessee. He is a member
of ASME and lectures in both English
and Spanish. He can be contacted at:
Tel: +1-615-361-7295;
Fax: +1-615-366-0040;
E-mail: larry@bachusinc.com
All these points are covered
thoroughly in the book co-authored
by Larry Bachus entitled Know and
Understand Centrifugal Pumps
(ISBN 1856174093), which is
published by Elsevier Science.
WORLD PUMPS March 2004