Experimental study on flow characteristics of ice slurry through a T-junction Part II: Turbulent flow

Abstract

An ice slurry, which is a mixture of ice particles and aqueous solution, has many advantages in storing thermal energy because the ice particles have a high latent heat of fusion and large heat exchange area. In this study, we experimentally investigated the flow characteristics of an ice slurry in a T-junction under turbulent flow. The ice slurry was produced from 5 mass% ethanol solution. We varied the inlet ice-packing factor (IPF), Reynolds number of the inlet flow, flow-rate ratio, and branch direction and measured the pressure drop and IPF of the slurry before and after the T-junction. The branch pressure drop of the slurry in turbulent flow was similar to that of single-phase flow. The IPF for the branch tube was lower than the inlet IPF when the flow-rate ratio was low, although the IPF for the main tube was almost constant. Moreover, the branch pressure drop and IPF were used to determine the branch loss coefficient of both the branch and main tubes to evaluate the energy loss of the branch.