Application of nuclear techniques in two-phase liquid-solid particles hydrotransport investigations

Marcin Zych,Pavel Vlasak,Marek Jaszczur,Leszek Petryka,Robert Hanus,P Dančová,M Veselý

doi:10.1051/epjconf/201611402145

Marcin Zych, Pavel Vlasak + Show 5 more

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.1051/epjconf/201611402145

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Abstract

The paper presents gamma radiation application to two-phase flow investigation in a vertical pipeline, where the flow of solid particles transported by water was examined by use of both: radiotracers and gamma-absorption method. The simultaneous use of two methods allows analyzing of important parameters of solid particles hydrotransport. In the described experiments as solid phase the ceramic models representing natural polymetallic ocean nodules were used. Radiotracers allow to track the movements of selected models, representing specified grain size and the designation of its velocity. However gamma-absorption method enables measurement of average solid-phase velocity. For analysis of electrical signals obtained from scintillation detectors the cross-correlation method has been applied.

Highlights

Two-phase liquid-solid particles flow occurs often in the mining industry
From the analysis of figure 8 and Table 2 it can be seen that velocity of the marked particles are in the range of greater XS values of the cross-correlation function (CCF) distribution determined for absorption measurement
In the case of large number of radiotracer experiments when the number of passes indicated in the installation of stones is over 50, the calculated velocity values should be close to the CCF distribution obtained from absorption measurements

Summary

Introduction

Two-phase liquid-solid particles flow occurs often in the mining industry. An example would be vertical pipeline hydrotransport of minerals, e.g. polymetallic nodules. In nuclear techniques radiotracer is injected under certain conditions into the flow and/or sealed radioactive sources are used [7,8,9,10,11,12,13,14,15,16,17,18,19] In both cases as detectors of radiation the scintillation probes are mounted outside of the analyzed stream. Radiotracer idea is based on marked particle tracking using a scintillation probes placed along the pipeline [7, 8, 18] The principle of both methods and typical gammaradiation measuring equipment for liquid–solid particles flow evaluation in a vertical pipeline is presented in figure 1.

Experimental set-up

The analysis of signals

Results

Conclusions