A three-dimensional model for the study of the cooling system of submersible electric pumps

We study the cooling system for submersible electric pumps. This study aims to provide some guidelines to improve the existing cooling system of these electric pumps when they work partially or totally not immersed in the service fluid. Note that inefficient cooling systems cannot prevent the rise in temperature of the alternating current (AC) motor of the pump, and the consequent reduction of the service factor.We propose a three-dimensional model to describe the fluid flow in the cooling circuit and the heat transfer among the engine of the electric pump, the cooling system and the external environment. This model is discretized by using a finite element method, and the resulting algorithm has been implemented in a FORTRAN code.We show some preliminary results obtained by this code using two different geometries for the cooling circuit, and we compare these results with experimental data and with other numerical results obtained in a previous work, by using a two-dimensional model.