Centrifugal compressor

Centrifugal compressors play a major role in gas turbine technology. A centrifugal compressor mainly consists of four elements. They are inlet casing with converging nozzle, impeller, diffuser and an outlet casing. Inlet casing accelerates the fluid to the impeller inlet where energy transfer takes place rising fluid kinetic energy and static pressure. A diffuser transforms this high kinetic energy of the fluid into static pressure. Fluid is collected in the outlet casing. The main components in an impeller are impeller vanes, hub, shroud and inducer. Impeller vanes transfer energy from impeller to fluid. Hub and shroud are two surfaces in an impeller.  Inducer is another surface which increases the angular momentum of the fluid without increasing its radius of rotation. The different impeller blades used are forward-curved blades, radial-curved blades and backward-curved blades.