Erosion of natural gas elbows due to rotating particles in turbulent gas-solid flow

Abstract

This work investigates the erosion of an elbow pipe due to the gas-solids turbulent pipe flow using computational fluid dynamics (CFD) with special attention to the effect of particle rotational motion on erosion. The gas-solid flow is solved by employing two-way coupled Eulerian-Lagrangian approach while enhanced wall treatment is used for modeling the flow behavior close to the walls and in boundary layer. Effects of key erosion parameters such as gas velocity, particle diameter and particle mass flow rate on the erosion rate was evaluated and discussed. Simulation results are verified with experimental data with concept of percent bias. Results show that the erosion rate is strongly affected by the particle rotation. The particles rotation has a considerable effect on the particle motion path and consequently the erosion pattern of the elbow. Particle trajectories show that particles have reverse motion due to rotation which plays a significant role on erosion pattern due to the more collision to the elbow wall.