Blocking dead zones to avoid plugs in pipes

Abstract

Slurries of solid particles in a liquid medium are common in chemical and petroleum industries. They possess significant clogging risks when transported in pipes during a process. This paper presents a simple and low-cost method to decrease the plugging risk in a flow system. For this, we streamline the pipes’ internal geometry, significantly reducing the volume of stagnation zones in pipes‘ dead legs. We test the approach experimentally and consider how the plugs are formed before and after the geometry modification. The experiments were carried out in a flow loop with the cohesive ice particles suspended in decane. The particle concentration was 2.2…15 % vol., and Reynolds numbers were below 20,000. After we reduced the dead zones with inserts, the particle concentration of a plug-free regime was increased by 8 % vol., and the minimum transport Reynolds number decreased by 74 %.