Ferrocyanide Safety Program: Waste tank sludge rheology within a hot spot or during draining. Homogeneous flow versus flow through a porous medium

摘要

The conditions under which ferrocyanide waste sludge flows as a homogeneous non-Newtonian two-phase (solid precipitate-liquid) mixture rather than as a liquid through a porous medium (of stationary precipitate) are examined theoretically, based on the notion that the preferred rheological behavior of the sludge is the one which imposes the least resistance to the sludge flow. The homogeneous two-phase mixture is modeled as a power-law fluid and simple criteria are derived that show that the homogeneous power-law sludge-flow is a much more likely flow situation than the porous medium model of sludge flow. The implication of this finding is that the formation of a hot spot or the drainage of sludge from a waste tank are not likely to result in the uncovering (drying) and subsequent potential overheating of the reactive-solid component of the sludge.