This year I’ve visited South Korea (Korea) five times. The destination has always been Changwon City so most of my experience and observations of Korea relate to that locale. Any Westerner’s experience with Korea inevitably starts with the food. Yes, most have heard of kimchee and Korean BBQ. But until you’ve had a traditional Korean-style […]
Horizontal or Vertical?
In selecting a pump for a given application there is sometimes the option of choosing either a vertical or a horizontal shaft pump arrangement. For instance, in a process plant certain product transfer applications might be performed by a can-type vertical pump, or a vertical in-line pump, or a horizontal process pump. Large capacity cooling […]
My first WEFTEC
This week I had my first WEFTEC experience. I live in LA and WEFTEC was held at the LA Convention Center, so I drove on over to see the exhibits. I thought I’d walk through and see everything in one day. Wrong. A person could physically walk through every aisle in each of the three […]
Specific Speed – Does it Matter?
To the pump engineer or pump manufacturer specific speed is terrifically important. To the specifying engineer or user – maybe, maybe not. The term specific speed comes up frequently in pump literature, in technical papers and is always covered in pump text books. It is frequently heard in pump technical banter and if one doesn’t […]
Is there any confusion about NPSH?
Net Positive Suction Head (NPSH) is perhaps the most misunderstood concept in pumping technology. The main source of confusion stems from multiple uses of the term in different but related contexts. One usage of the term NPSH is to denote the suction performance characteristic of the pump itself, independent of the system into which it […]
Multi-stage pump in-line (tandem) versus opposed impeller arrangements
Common to early twentieth century multi-stage rotodynamic (centrifugal) pumps were design features for minimizing axial thrust. At that time the thrust bearings available had limited load carrying capability. Design solutions evolved in two principal directions. One design approach was to hydraulically balance the thrust for each stage or for the entire series of in-line (tandem) […]