A Monitoring System for the Slurry Flow in Horizontal Pipes.

Abstract

For the safety of the transportation system of a slurry pipeline, it is very important to catch the behavior of the flow in the pipe. Hydraulic pressure, mean velocity, and delivered concentration are, in general, measured for monitoring the settling slurry flow. However the flow patterns in the pipe at any moment can not directly be shown with these data. A video camera system for the monitoring is probably not useful for the opaque pipelines, or even the pipelines with transparency parts, because the flow becomes muddy under practical transport conditions.In this study, we provided a method for predicting the solid particle motion and the distributions of in-situ concentrations of the solid based on collected measurements. The method was capable of displaying the flow modes on a monitoring screen by using the random model associated with the concentration distribution of solid particles. Comparison of predicted and experimental images indicated that the proposed system was effective for monitoring solid-water mixture flows.