Experimental Determination of the Effect of Number of Impeller Blades on the Air Flow Rate and Power Consumption of Centrifugal Blowers
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Date
2016
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Abstract
Design parameters for a centrifugal blower includes, power of a motor, impeller diameter, impeller width,
impeller rotational speed, volume flow rate and number of blades in an impeller, while relationship among
several of this parameters are well defined in literature, it is unclear as to how the number of impellers blades
affect the performance of a blower. In this work, an experimental method to determine the effect of number of
blades in an impeller is described. The blower has been tested at three different speeds using five fabricated
impellers with 4, 5, 6, 7 and 8 blades respectively. It is found that, for all 3 selected blower speeds, air flow rate
increase by about 19% by increasing the number of impeller blades from 4 to 8. It is also found that increasing
blower speed has a significant increase in flow rate; that is, more that 80% increase upon doubling the number
of impeller blades. It is also found that there is slight variation in power consumption due to change in number
of blades. It is therefore proposed that changing the number of impeller blades can only be applied to fine tune
the blower design within 15-20% flow rate variation. However nominal flow rate has to be established using
blower speed and dimensions. Power consumption if found to increase slightly with maximum variation of 3%
on increasing blade number from 4 to 8. The results are useful in the design or re-design of fabricated blowers
and selection of suitable speed. When space is a constraint, increase in the number of blades or blower speed can
respectively be applied to increase air flow rate depending on the magnitude of the increase required.
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Keywords
Blower air flow rate, Blower design parameters, Blower power consumption, Centrifugal blower, Number of impeller blades
Citation
Mwinuka, T., 2016. Experimental Determination of the Effect of Number of Impeller Blades on the Air Flow Rate and Power Consumption of Centrifugal Blowers. American Scientific Research Journal for Engineering, Technology, and Sciences (ASRJETS), 17(1), pp.81-88.