A PIPELINE TRANSPORT CORRELATION FOR SLURRIES WITH SMALL BUT DENSE PARTICLES

摘要

Most correlations/models for minimum transport or critical velocity of slurry were developed for slurries composed of particles greater than ~100-200 μm diameter with narrow particle-size distributions which is typical of the minerals industry. Many other process industries handle smaller particles. In particular waste slurries at the U.S. Department of Energy's Hanford Site have broad size distributions and significant fractions of smaller particles. Despite the size of these wastes, recent studies at Pacific Northwest National Laboratory indicate that the small particles might be of sufficient density to pose a significant risk for pipeline deposition and plugging. To allow predictive assessment of deposition of fine dense particles for waste slurry transport at the U.S. DOE Hanford site, a pipeline-transport correlation for critical velocity was developed using a simple power-law between two dimensionless numbers important for slurry transport, the deposition Froude and Archimedes numbers. The correlation accords well with experimental data for slurries with Archimedes numbers <80 and is an adequate pipeline design guide for processing Hanford waste slurry.