The key issue associated with the thermal power plant is the disposal of ash-water slurry and the process of its transportation is accomplished using long length pipelines. The designing of such pipelines is a vital endeavor of researchers and designers globally. In this perspective, numerical simulation of 42 mm diameter three-dimensional slurry flow pipeline carrying high concentration of mono-dispersed fine ash particles has been carried out. The study is enunciated by employing Eulerian-Eulerian two-phase model with RNG k-ɛ turbulence model with the aim of visualizing and understanding the characteristics of the slurry flow behavior. The coal ash slurry concentration varies between 50% to 70% (by weight) for velocity ranges, 1-3 ms -1 . The modeling is done using Fluent commercial software with the intention of predicting the characteristics of flow for 300 µm particle size. It is observed that pressure drop upsurges non-linearly with solid concentrations and slurry velocity across pipeline. The obtained results of predetermined pressure drop are analytically compared with the experimental results. Moreover, the results are also compared with that of Eulerian-Langrange model using SST K-ω turbulence model and it is found that RNG k-ɛ turbulence model yields more accurate and desirable results.
Over the decades conveying solid particles through pipelines is a prevalent usage for many industries like food industries, pharmaceutical, oil and gas-solid handling, power generations etc. In the present study, slurry flow through 54.9 mm diameter and 4 m long horizontal pipe with solid particle diameter 0.125 mm and specific gravity 2.47 has been numerically analysed using a granular version of Eulerian two-phase model and RNG K- model. The solid particles are considered as mono-dispersed in the Eulerian model. These models are available in computational fluid dynamics (CFD) fluent software package. Non-uniform structured three-dimensional mesh with a refinement near wall boundary region has been selected for discretising the flow domain, and governing equations are solved using control volume finite difference method. Simulations are conducted at velocity varying from 1 m/s to 5 m/s and efflux concentration varying from 0.1 to 0.5 by volume. Different slurry flow parameters such as solid concentration distribution, velocity distribution, pressure drop etc. have been analysed from the simulated results. The simulated results of pressure drop are correlated with the experimental data available in previous literature and are found to be in excellent compliance with the experimental data.
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