Numerical investigation of ice pigging isothermal flow in water-supply pipelines cleaning

Abstract

Ice pigging, which is a trenchless technology in pipeline cleaning, is novel and efficient to remove the sediment in water-supply pipelines. The numerical model was built in this work to simulate the ice pigging isothermal flow for the first time. Due to the complexity of the solid-liquid two-phase physical properties in the ice pigging flow, the numerical model adopted the kinetic theory of granular flow in the Eulerian-Eulerian multiphase model which was validated by the experimental data reported in literature. The numerical model results showed that the ice volume fraction distribution varied in different pipe section locations and revealed the uneven shear stress distribution in the pipe. Moreover, the ice particles in the ice pig had little effect on the bottom of the pipe during the pipe cleaning process due to the inevitable inhomogeneity of the ice slurry. Besides, with ice melting the uneven distribution of ice particles reduced.