Abstract
The study presents the numerical computational fluid dynamics (CFD) analysis of sand-water slurry flow with different sand particle sizes viz. 90µm, 125µm, 150µm, 200µm and 270µm having specific gravity of 2.65 through a 103 mm diameter, 5.5 m long horizontal pipeline for a high flow velocity of 5.4 m/s at various solid volumetric concentrations viz. 10%, 20%, 30%, 36% and 40%. Granular version of Eulerian two-phase model with dispersed particles along with RNG –epsilon approach has been utilized. Non-uniform structured mesh with a refinement near the wall boundary has been selected for discretizing the computational flow domain while Navier-Stokes governing equations are solved in FLUENT 14.0. The effects of the size of sand particles and solid volumetric concentrations on territorial concentration distributions, particle flow velocity and pressure drops have been studied and analyzed. Generalized mathematical correlation has been developed from the simulated results for calculating the consequences of the size of solid particles and solid volumetric concentration on pressure drop analytically. The simulated outcomes of pressure drop are validated with the experimental results. These outcomes will be very helpful in the setup of an experimental model for sand/water slurry flow pipelines in many industries viz. mining, construction, power generation etc.
Highlights
Conveyance of solid materials through pipelines over a long distance is a well-known mode of transportation over the years
These results show that in conveyance of sand-water slurry through pipeline, the larger particles accumulates at the bottom of the pipe thereby reducing effective flow area and which leads to poor productivity
Granular version of Eulerian two-phase model and RNG K-ε turbulence model are selected for the mono-dispersed sand particles
Summary
Conveyance of solid materials through pipelines over a long distance is a well-known mode of transportation over the years. Researches began from the third decades of 20th century for establishing a general solution for the accurate prediction of different slurry flow variables like solid concentration distribution, distribution of flow velocity and pressure drop. Initial studies in this area includes the work of O’brien [1] and Rouse [2] who studied the concentration distribution of very low volumetric concentration solid particles in an open channel gravitybased flow using a diffusion model. Roco and Shook [7] proposed an explicit algorithm based differential equation for numerical analysis of slurry flow through
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