Study of the disc-type electromagnetic pump with permanent magnets for liquid metal applications

The electromagnetic pumps on permanent magnets are a promising technology for liquid metal transportation using electromagnetic interaction between electrically conducting fluid and magnetic field. In this article, a numerical 3D magnetic field distribution is provided and compared with experimentally measured magnetic field mapping in the liquid metal channel. Using an electrodynamic approach, this data is further used to calculate the pump pressure-flowrate (p-Q) characteristics in the solid body approximation. A good agreement is obtained with experimentally measured p-Q characteristics during the pump prototype tests. The experiment was conducted on the newly designed liquid sodium (Na) loop at the Institute of Physics of the University of Latvia (IPUL).