Effect of Mono-Dispersed Solids Slurry Characteristics on Horizontal Bends

Abstract

Erosion in multiphase flow due to the effect of solid particles is a key factor in wearing of industrial pipelines. In recent years, industries are using Computational Fluid Dynamics to study erosion wear in pipelines. Researchers have investigated various factors that affect the erosion of pipelines including particle size, velocity, coating material, fluid viscosity, region of pipe (bends/fittings convex or concave), etc. This paper investigates the effect of various slurry parameters on the rate of material erosion in the pipeline, under different sets of operation conditions. Silica sand (density= 2650 kg/m3 ) slurry was considered for the simulations, mixed in water at different volumetric concentration (12%, 24% and 36%), with an inlet velocity of 2.74 m/s and 3.56 m/s. The particle size was considered constant at 225µm, 450µm and 675µm, respectively. Simulations are done in ANSYS-FLUENT software under Eulerian two-phase model with k-ε approach. Results showed that the erosion rate followed the trend of increasing with an increase in all the above mentioned varying parameters as it varied from 8.25 mm/yr to 18.93 mm/yr. It was also hinted that as particle size reduced, the influence of velocity as a contributing parameter reduced which is explained by the fact that the mixture is leading from suspension state to colloidal state.