PRESSURE DROP ANALYSIS AND EROSION PREDICTION FOR THE FLOW OF A MULTI-SIZE PARTICULATE SLURRY ACROSS A HORIZONTAL PIPE

Lots of work is going on in the field of slurry flow regarding the rheological parameters of multi-size particulate flow. It is an imperative part of the pipeline industry; moreover, we can say that the pipeline industry has some reliance on multi-size particulate flow. Many investigators have carried out both physical and numerical modeling of the erosion of pipe bends, elbows, tees, and related geometries. Since the early 1990s, computational fluid dynamics has been widely used for solid particle erosion prediction in curved pipes and ducts, with various analytical, semi-empirical, and empirical models having been developed. In the present work, the rheological characteristics of a coal water slurry is determined and along with this a new slurry-a copper ore water slurry-is introduced and it has a more complex rheological behavior because the coarse particle of copper ore are nonuniform in size as compared to coal water slurry. The pressure drop is calculated by using ANSYS14.0 (Pa) with a volume fraction of 0.11-0.25 and particle size of 70.5-275.7 mu m (for the coal water slurry) and with volume fraction of 0.08-0.19 and particle size of 40.1-278.5 mu m (for the copper ore water slurry) and is validated with the past results available in the literature. The grid independence studies are also done in order to fix the proper grid for the study considered. It was also observed that, for the coal water slurry, the pressure drop is maximum for smallest particle diameter; whereas for copper ore water slurry, the pressure drop is maximum for the largest particle diameter, which is because the coarse size particles of copper do not have a uniform shape like coal particles. Thus, because of the nonuniformity in size the viscosity increases for large particle diameters as a result the pressure drop also increases; however for high volume fraction, the irregularity in size may get reduced, which is why the viscosity reduces and as a result the pressure drop again reduces.