Pressure losses associated with slurry flow in horizontal pipelines

Abstract

The flow of solid liquid mixtures (slurries) has attracted much attention in research work because of its importance to industry. Prediction of pressure losses associated with slurry flow helps pipe designers select the correct pipe sizes for optimum energy consumption, equipment sizing and reliable operation of the pipeline networks. Many workers developed empirical correlations, but due to the randomness of the problem they seem of limited use in design applications because they do not contain an assessment except by trial and error, which is costly. The existence of more than one particle size poses more complexities to the slurry flow problem but it is in need in practical applications. The aims of this work are justified under the light of the observations on the state of the art in slurry transport. An experimental program is designed to highlight the effects of this problem through a predetermined set of test runs. The variables are grouped to optimise the number of experiments and to remove the effect of dimensions on the prediction method The test rig is built to serve the aims of this exercise and test runs conducted, results grouped and discussed for polyfractional slurries. A mathematical model is developed in the form of an empirical correlation. Statistical tests are employed to verify the goodness of fit. Finally, conclusions and recommendations for further work are listed