Alessandro Nocente held a public defence related to his Ph.D. research project, Separation Friendly Produced Water Pumps, at NTNU, Department of Energy and Process Engineering. The defence was accepted, and Nocente received the degree Ph.D. from NTNU.

The research was aimed to visualize and understand the flow characteristics in different parts of the pump to understand their effect on droplet growth both experimentally and through CFD. This enables fine-tuning of the design of the pump internals to increase the performance of the pump with regards to droplet growth. A particular attention was focused on the recurring turbulent flow structures in the machine passages, and the evaluation of the possible influence these can have on the droplets breakage and on the coalescing promotion.

Supervisor has been Professor Torbjørn Nielsen from NTNU and co-supervisor has been Technology Manager Trygve Husveg, Typhonix AS. The project was financed by the Research Council of Norway and ENI Norge has been sponsor for the work.

Following is an extract from the abstract of the thesis available at http://hdl.handle.net/11250/2414453:

The solutions adopted today are mainly based on the use of volumetric pumps, such as screw pumps. These machines ensure a low breakage level, but the nature of the fluid and the working conditions significantly reduces their operating life. Operating life would be longer if dynamic machines were used, but they introduce a higher shear in the fluid because of their very operating principle. Typhonix AS is developing multistage centrifugal pumps for produced water treatment which couple the longer life of a centrifugal pump with the low droplet breakage typical of a volumetric machine. By means of a special hydraulic design, these pumps have also demonstrated a coalescing effect on the droplets which translates in an increase in the efficiency of downstream removal system.