Open Access

ARTICLE

On the Influence of Vortex-Induced Resistance on Oil-Shale Particle-Slurry Flow in Vertical Pipes

Li-an Zhao^1,*, Tieli Wang²

1 College of Mining, Liaoning Technical University, Fuxin, 123000, China
2 Pipeline Engineering Institute, Wuhan Design and Research Institute of China Coal Technology and Engineering Group, Wuhan, 430064, China

* Corresponding Author: Li-an Zhao. Email:

Fluid Dynamics & Materials Processing 2021, 17(2), 413-426. https://doi.org/10.32604/fdmp.2021.011205

Received 26 April 2020; Accepted 28 December 2020; Issue published 02 April 2021

Abstract

The transportation in vertical pipelines of particle slurry of oil shale has important applications in several fields (marine mining, hydraulic mining, dredging of river reservoir, etc.). However, there is still a lack of information about the behavior of coarse particles in comparison to that of fine particles. For this reason, experiments on the fluidization and hydraulic lifting of coarse oil shale particles have been carried out. The experimental data for three kinds of particles with an average size of 5 mm, 15 mm and 25 mm clearly demonstrate that vortices can be formed behind the particles. On this basis, a vortex resistance factor K is proposed here to describe this effect. A possible correlation law is defined by means of a data fitting method accordingly. This law is validated by an experiment employing particles with an average size of 3.4 mm. The vortex resistance factor K results in a reduction of the speed of solid particles and an increase in the sliding speed as well as a decrease in the hydraulic gradient. As a result, using this factor, the calculation of the solid particle speed and hydraulic gradient can be made more accurate with respect to measured values.

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Keywords

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