Particle Transport Velocity Through Pipe

[jssmith1978]

Hi,

I am looking for a formula and/or source that could give me transport velocities (aka settling velocities) for particles traveling through pipes. My goal is to wash coal debris into a drainage system and transport it through a 6" pipe and not allow the fine particles of the coal to settle and form sediment piles in the pipe which could later build up and eventually clog the pipe.

Any help is greatly appreciated. Thank You.

 

[MiketheEngineer]

There was a professor at the University of Missouri - Columbia who spent much of his life figuring this all out. I think his name was Dr. Liu. Tragically he died a few months ago in a car crash. I am sure UMC has some of his works or publications outlining this idea. He was working on this when I was a studnet in 1975!!! and was still working on it. Not sure if it was really that big a problem or he just strung it out for 35+ years

 

[SNORGY]

jssmith1978:

I have used GPSA, 11th Edition, Volume 1, Section 7 with success.

Applicable are Equations 7-1 thru 7-6 and Figures 7-3 & 7-4.

The above works well provided you are not too concerned about a moving bed flow pattern and you just want to get an idea of which particles will carry and which particles will settle out. Apart from that, the book:

"Flow Of Complex Mixtures In Pipe" - Govier, Aziz et al will give some more complete treatment.

Regards,

SNORGY.

 

[gerhardl]

Since I do not know all your details, just a thought:

Seems that you by 6" drainage is thinking unpressurized, self-fall and regulating the setteling problem by amount of water?

This could be OK if transport is short and total cost including waterprice (amount including cleaning afterwards).

If not, there exists pressuriced systems either operating by (batchwise) pumps (using cleaner part of water as pushing all debris in front),or vessels acting as batchwise cannons, using clean water or water driven by pressuriced air as a batchwise transport media.

More solid and lowerdimension pipe could perhaps be selected, and you do not need self-fall pipelines.

Pipes and valves adapted to pigging and given (sharp, abrasive) media. Remember in case solid clambering of pipe.