Failure Analysis of Submersible Pumps—A Review

Electrical submersible pumps (ESP) are the classification of hydraulic pump that is applicable to transport fluids from submersible elevations toward a fixed pipeline. Submersible pumps are commonly put to use in several areas such as domestic utilization, city water supply, irrigation system, and extensive industrial applications. Therefore, it is estimated that a significant portion of total electrical grid energy is consumed to run the electrical submersible pump. Hence, in the case of a faulty electrical submersible pump, the consumption of total grid energy increases. For the economic growth of any country, it is very important to understand the different failure mechanism, which arises in the electrical submersible pump, and also it is necessary to find out the root causes of these ESP failures along with proper mitigation methods to avoid these kinds of failures. Although electrical submersible pumps are being used for many years ago, it is still suffering from many failures, and these failures can be summarized into three major kinds of failures, i.e., electrical failures, mechanical failures, and operational failures. This review paper deals with a comprehensive study based on ESP failure mechanisms and a proper analysis of these failures for the determination of optimum conditions. It is found that among these failures, electrical failure is a very severe form, and suitable equipment and material can reduce this. Mechanical failure is mainly dependent on the material of the equipment; hence, the equipment should be corrosion resistant and compatible to avoid these kinds of failures. Operational failure is mainly dependent on the nature of the processing fluid. The processing fluid can be a single phase (only liquid), two phases (liquid and solid), and multiphase (liquid, solid, and gas). Failures due to multiphase fluid are more significant than that of others.