Abstract
Drinking water distribution systems are prone to (bio)fouling over time, negatively impacting drinking water quality. Ice slurry pigging is a promising technology used to remove solids attached to the inner parts of the pipe walls with ice-water mixture. To understand the ice slurry pigging flow characteristics and optimize its operations, this study presents the development of a Computational Fluid Dynamics model (CFD) combined with the Kinetic Theory of Granular Flow model (KTGF) and a thermal model. Firstly, the model is validated with experimental data from the literature on solid-liquid Two-Phase Flow (TPF), including flow characteristics and thermal effects. Secondly, simulations for a typical ice slurry pigging process show uneven ice phase fraction and shear stress distributions in the main pipe flow and vertical direction. Results indicate that the main limitations of effective pipe cleaning are due to buoyancy and thermal effects. Moreover, ice slurry with 1.0 mm ice particles performs better in providing effective shear stress compared to 0.1 mm, 0.5 mm, and 1.5 mm ice particles. Additionally, the optimal injection ratios of ice slurry with 1.0 mm are determined to be over 0.3 and 0.26 when cleaning pipeline lengths within 500 m and 1000 m, respectively.
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